City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920

This scholarly yet ribald history of New York City's ``whorearchy'' (as early wags termed the ladies of the night) also sheds light on present mores. Gilfoyle, who teaches at Chicago's Loyola University, has produced a Baedeker of NYC's early brothels, concert saloons and bawdy assignation houses. He shows how ``unprecedented demographic growth, residential transience, deplorably low female wages, new real estate patterns and a sporting-male ideology and subculture undermined older patterns of sexual behavior after 1820.'' The details--erotic or shocking, depending on one's point of view--are here. Virgin prostitutes commanded the most money; 16-year-olds were over the hill. Quotes from such 19th-century periodicals as Rake and Whip prove that the Playboy philosophy existed long before Hugh Hefner. Yesteryear's prostitutes, the author demonstrates, were equivalent to today's homeless people--and plenty of New York men said yes to the ``gay girls'' who swarmed over the streets. Although he maintains an objective tone, Gilfoyle evinces a muted libertine enthusiasm for the demi-monde. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)