1920 Casino
Royal Events Presents: “The 1920s Casino Night” Do you want a special way of showing your appreciation to clients, business associates or employees? Experience Royal Events' very own '1920s Casino Night' – a casino night created in homage to the golden 20s. Casino 1920 - Welcome to the jungle Explore the CRAZY JUNGLE at Casino 1920 for more fun than a barrel of monkeys and excitement greater than your wildest dreams. Catch the liana. 1920’s Great Gatsby Theme Night The roaring 20’s is a fantastic and interesting period of the 20 th century and it makes for a great option for your next theme night. This period of history was full of glitz and glamour, of gangsters and molls, of hidden casinos and speak easys. Listen to jazz bands and be entertained by themed entertainment.
1920 Casino Theme
We have an early poster advertising Whitey Kaufman and his orchestra to appear at the Mount Pocono Casino on June 29, 1927. Click on the poster to see larger image. Dancing was from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., and the 'expense' was $1 per person.
Pretty pricey for the 1920s, but Kaufman was a big-name act, and had a hit phonograph recording called 'Paddlin' Madeline Home.' This recording came out in 1925, just two years after 'The Charleston,' and is one of those songs associated with the Roaring 20s. (Remember that 'records' had only been around for 25 years at the time this was made, and radio was just getting started!)
Marlin E. 'Whitey' Kaufman was from Lebanon, Pa., and formed the Original Pennsylvania Serenaders while a student at Lebanon Valley College in the early 1920s. The 11-piece group went on to become Victor recording artists, and were booked throughout the country through the mid to late 1930s.
In 1927: Mount Pocono was incorporated as a borough this year. Calvin Coolidge is president, and the country is enjoying the 'modernity' of the Roaring Twenties. Henry Ford sells his 15 millionth Model T, Charles Lindbergh makes the first transatlantic flight, and the 'Lindy Hop' becomes the latest dance craze. The United States is halfway through the Prohibition years, Babe Ruth hits a record-making 60 home runs, and the first talking motion picture, 'The Jazz Singer,' is released. The very first Academy Awards would be presented next year, in 1928.
➤ THE 1930s
Central Park was originally intended to be a place of rest and relaxation, a naturalistic preserve away from the teeming crowds of the mid-19th century city.
So how did a posh, glitzy nightclub end up on the park’s East Drive at 72nd Street in the high society 1920s?
It has to do with James J. Walker, the nightlife loving, charmingly corrupt mayor of New York from 1925 to 1932.
The nightclub was called the Casino (above and left), and even before it became a club, it had an interesting history.
In 1864, it started out as a modest stone cottage designed by Calvert Vaux to be the “Ladies Refreshment Saloon,” where respectable women visiting the park unaccompanied by a man could grab a bite to eat.
By the late 19th century, it evolved into a regular restaurant. Rather than a gambling house, the Casino (“little house” in Italian) was “where well-to-do diners could get a steak for seventy-five cents” while sipping wine on a terrace (below), according to Andrew F. Smith’s Savoring Gotham.
Enter Mayor Walker. The Casino would now be run by Walker’s friends, who turned the expanded cottage into a Jazz Age nightspot.
“Under its new regime, the Casino catered to the rich and famous,” reported the Complete Illustrated Map and Guidebook to Central Park.
“Met at the door by liveried footmen, guests dined on elegant French cuisine, and—despite Prohibition—happily paid inflated prices for mixers to go with the bootleg liquor they brought with them.”
“Dancing, in a spectacular black-glass ballroom to the tunes of Leo Reisman’s society orchestra, went on until 3 a.m. Mayor Walker and his mistress, the Broadway showgirl Betty Compton (left), were often the last to leave.”
The Casino continued entertaining the city’s elite club crowd even after the Depression hit.
It was a huge success, grossing more than $3 million in five years of operation . . . with the city getting $42K in rent.
But by the early 1930s, it was seen as a symbol of excess. Mayoral candidate Fiorello La Guardia denounced it as a “whoopee joint.”
In 1935, Robert Moses, the city’s legendary Parks Commissioner, tore it down (above, right before demolition) and replaced it with Rumsey Playfield—a concert venue that entertains New Yorkers in an entirely different way today.
1920 Casino Style
[Photos: centralpark.org; MCNY]