Dancing at Reisenweber’s

New York City, 
1912-1915 

Reisenweber’s played a pivotal role in American popular culture during the second decade of the 20th century. While it is remembered today as the venue where jazz was introduced to a broader audience in 1917, its historical significance began earlier, during the dance craze that swept New York in 1912. It was the first restaurant to offer its patrons a dedicated space for dancing, which it vigorously promoted. The energy of this period of dramatic social change is captured in an audio slideshow featuring over ninety pieces of ephemera from 1912 to 1915. While most of the items reflect the location on Eighth Avenue at Columbus Circle, some pieces come from the properties it managed on Coney Island—the Brighton Beach Casino and the Shelburne Hotel—and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1915, which it catered.

Reisenweber’s dedicated four floors of its ornate, seven-story building to dining and entertainment. This lively, bustling space became instrumental in shaping the cabaret, as it was the first American restaurant to present a show with more than one act—a concept quickly embraced by other establishments in Broadway's theater district. Reisenweber’s also contributed to the dance craze by hosting numerous themed events, notably the “tango teas,” or thé dansants. These popular late afternoon dances, introduced in January 1913, featured male dancing partners, which the restaurant claimed to have imported from Paris. This first tango tea is a landmark moment, commemorated in an invitation card seen in the video below. Some themes became recurring events, while others appeared only once, such as a baby contest that attempted to lure young mothers out of their nearby apartments on the Upper West Side.

When Reisenweber’s and the other cabarets closed in the late teens and early 1920s due to Prohibition, the party continued at the speakeasies where advertising was done by word of mouth. 


Notes 
1. Soon after the Original Dixieland Jass (sic) Band made its acclaimed debut at Reisenweber’s 400 Room, it released the first jazz recording in February 1917, a turning point in popular culture that ignited the Jazz Age.
2. Austrian-born Louis Fischer took over the management of the well-established restaurant from his father-in-law, John Reisenweber, in the early 1900s. After expanding in 1910, Fischer took the business in new directions. 
3. New York Hotel Record, Vol. 12, No. 10, 3 February 1914. 
4. New York Times, 10 August 1931.