The city seemed untroubled by the war. Broadway—“the Great White Way,” so dubbed for its bright electric lighting—came brilliantly alight and alive each night, as always, although now with unexpected competition. A number of restaurants had begun providing lavish entertainment along with meals, even though they lacked theater licenses. The city was threatening a crackdown on these maverick “cabarets.” One operator, the manager of Reisenweber’s at Eighth Avenue and Columbus Circle, said he would welcome a ban. The competition was wearing him out. His establishment was running a musical revue called “Too Much Mustard,” featuring “a Host of BEAUTIFUL GIRLS,” and a separate “Whirlwind Cabaret” with a quintet of minstrels and a full lunch—table d’h?te—for a buck, with dancing between courses. “The public,” he complained, “is making such ridiculous demands for elaborate entertainment with meals that it is really dangerous for everybody in the restaurant business.”
In case any of the newly arrived passengers needed some last-minute clothing for the voyage, there was New York’s perennial attraction: shopping. Spring sales were under way or about to begin. Lord and Taylor on Fifth Avenue was advertising men’s raincoats for $6.75, less than half their usual price. B. Altman, a few blocks south, didn’t deign to list actual prices but assured female shoppers they would find “decided reductions” in the cost of gowns and suits from Paris, these to be found on its third floor in the department of “Special Costumes.” And, strangely, a tailor of German heritage, House of Kuppenheimer, was advertising a special suit, “the British.” The company’s ads proclaimed, “All men are young in these stirring days.”
The city’s economy, like that of the nation as a whole, had by now improved dramatically, owing to the wartime boost in demand for American wares, especially munitions. The lull in shipping had ended; by year’s end, the United States would report a record trade surplus of $1.5 billion, or $35.9 billion today. Real estate, ever an obsession in New York, was booming, with large buildings under construction on the East and West Sides. Work was about to begin on a new twelve-story apartment building at the corner of Eighty-eighth and Broadway. Expected cost: $500,000. There were extravagant displays of spending. It’s possible that some of the Lusitania’s first-class passengers attended a big party at Delmonico’s the Friday night before departure, thrown by Lady Grace Mackenzie, “the huntress,” as the Times described her. The party had a jungle theme, with fifty guests, among them explorers, hunters, zoologists, two cheetahs, and “a black ape.” Delmonico’s had filled the banquet room with palm trees and layered the walls with palm fronds to create the effect of dining in an African glade. Black men in tights and white tunics kept watch on the animals, though in fact the black pigment proved to be the effect of burned cork and low lighting. The list of appetizers included stuffed eagles’ eggs.
Although the city’s newspapers carried a lot of war news, politics and crime tended to dominate the front page. Murder was a fascination, as always. On Thursday, April 29, in the midst of the heat wave, a city produce merchant who had recently lost his job sent his wife to the movies, then shot his five-year-old son to death and killed himself. A Bridgeport, Connecticut, man presented his girlfriend with an engagement ring and handed her one end of a ribbon; the other end disappeared into his pocket. “A surprise,” he said, and urged her to pull it. She obliged. The ribbon was attached to the trigger of a revolver. The man died instantly. And on Friday, April 30, four criminals escaped from the drug ward at Bellevue Hospital, wearing pink pajamas. Three of the men were found, “after a thorough search of the neighborhood by policemen, hospital attendants, and small boys,” the Times said. The fourth man was at large, presumably still dressed in pink.
And there was this: a report that plans had been completed for a ceremony to dedicate a memorial fountain to Jack Phillips, wireless operator aboard the Titanic, and to eight other Marconi operators likewise killed in maritime disasters. The article noted, “Space is left for the addition of other names in the future.”
THE LUSITANIA’S roster of passengers included 949 British citizens (including residents of Canada), 71 Russians, 15 Persians, 8 French, 6 Greeks, 5 Swedes, 3 Belgians, 3 Dutch, 2 Italians, 2 Mexicans, 2 Finns, and 1 traveler each from Denmark, Spain, Argentina, Switzerland, Norway, and India.