Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/172

146 V. Evenings at Paresis Hall.

During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the headquarters for avocational female-impersonators of the upper and middle classes was "Paresis Hall," on Fourth Avenue several blocks south of Fourteenth Street. In front was a modest bar-room; behind, a small beer-garden. The two floors above were divided into small rooms for rent. In 1921 I visited the site, as well as that of the "Hotel" Comfort (the two Rialto resorts with which I was most intimately identified) in order to take photographs for publication in this book, but found both structures supplanted.

Paresis Hall bore almost the worst reputation of any resort of New York's Underworld. Preachers in New York pulpits of the decade would thunder Philippics against the "Hall," referring to it in bated breath as "Sodom!" They were laboring under a fundamental misapprehension. But even while I was an habitue, the church and the press carried on such a war against the resort that the "not-care-a-damn" politicians who ruled little old New York had finally to stage a spectacular raid. After this, the resort, though continuing in business (because of political influence), turned the cold shoulder on androgynes and tolerated the presence of none in feminine garb.

But there existed little justification for the police's "jumping on" the "Hall" as a sop to puritan sentiment. Culturally and ethically, its distinctive clientele ranked high. Their only offence—but such