Mae West had heard all the stories about the infamous Bowery "resort" near Houston Street, namely McGurk's Suicide Hall [295 Bowery]. The second chapter of "Diamond Lil" (a 256-page novelization of the play published by Macaulay in 1932) is SUICIDE HALL. Lil's adventures take her further downtown to the hidden dens of Chinatown; the tenth chapter is A NIGHT ON DIVISION STREET.
• • Say "cheese"! Ready for the wrecking ball at 295 Bowery. Before demolition, part of the exterior was photographed.
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• • Mae West was not the only writer to revisit the Bowery. In May 1904, married actors Mr. and Mrs. Terry McGovern starred in Theodore Kremer's stirring melodrama "The Bowery After Dark" at the People's Theatre. Kremer set his scenes in Suicide Hall, Chatham Square, Chinatown, etc.
• • During the 1890s The New York World commissioned artist Julius C. Fireman to illustrate the interior of Suicide Hall.
• • Unfortunately, a sketch was sketchy. You really had to BE there - - on site - - to understand how well the place functioned. Rich in real estate, John McGurk owned a 4-story establishment that he joined to a charming one-story annex. Each building fronted on the Bowery (numbered 251-253 Bowery during the 1890s) and could be exited by way of several secret passageways, so that the customer could escape an enemy easily and wind up on First Street, Second Avenue, Houston, or even in a private courtyard.
• • Owen Kildare lived in the Bowery and wrote about it. Stephen Crane set "Maggie, Girl of the Streets" [1893] near Suicide Hall. From 1880 - 1920, it's been said that no street ever made such an impression on writers as the Bowery did. The New York Times called it "the liveliest mile on the face of the earth during 1880-1895." The more the literary types set fiction there, the trendier it became to rediscover low life.
• • Mae West and the self-confessed saloon scholars understood that the Bowery boy and his female counterpart, the "Tough Girl," had to be made amusing before they would be accepted as entertainment.
• • By the time Diamond Lil sashays inside Suicide Hall, bejeweled and gowned, the sinister setting had been properly de-fanged. Public acclaim kept Mae busy, touring with the play, and then filming it as a Hollywood movie with her leading man Cary Grant.
• • According to an article [13 May 1999] in The New York Times, the building had been a hotel during the Civil War, catering to returning soldiers. By the 1890s it was a brothel and a dive where . . . a half-dozen destitute courtesans drank carbolic acid and died. John H. McGurk, the owner of the saloon on the ground floor, then capitalized on the notoriety of the place by renaming it McGurk’s Suicide hall.
• • Later, beginning in World War I and continuing into the 1950s and early 1960s, it was a flophouse for Skid Row veterans. In the mid-80’s it was converted into artists’ studios.
• • The N.Y. Times concluded: "Despite this colorful past, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission denied landmark status to the building, finding that it did not have sufficient historical, cultural, or architectural merit."
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Mae West• • Photo • Mae West was interviewed about reprising the role of "Diamond Lil" for the silver screen [1934] • Suicide Hall in 2004
NYCMae West.
