50 Years Off the Bowery

It was the 50th anniversary of Eddie Cantor's alma mater--the Educational Alliance, world's largest community center, on Manhattan's fabled East Side. To celebrate the occasion, Cantor recalled an appearance at the Alliance in 1900:

"I sang a song called Just Because She Made Dem Goo-Goo Eyes . . . the audience kept applauding, to see how much further [my eyes] could pop out without something tragic happening . . . the encouragement . . . prompted me to enter show business."

How many million alumni are joining the anniversary party this week in body or in spirit Alliance officials cannot guess, but among the celebrators are:

> Philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen, who met his future wife when they were adolescent logic-choppers in the Alliance's Comte Synthetic Circle.

> R.C.A.'s President David Sarnoff, who, along with the East Side's Alfred Emanuel Smith, addressed an anniversary meeting.

> Cinemactor John Garfield.

> Playwright Samson Raphaelson, whose Jazz Singer is a corny version of the life many an Alliance alumnus knows.

When a group including Isidor Straus (R. H. Macy & Co.) and Jacob Henry Schiff (Kuhn, Loeb & Co.) set up the Alliance in 1893, the main purpose was to Americanize the immigrant stream inundating New York City. In 1924 the Johnson Act dammed the stream and today the Americanization job is largely done. The worst slums have gone.

But the neighborhood east of the Bowery still keeps many features of its far from gay '90s. The uninspired yellow-brick Alliance building is one (not so the spacious playground near by). There, too, are the buildings of the leading U.S. Yiddish newspapers (The Jewish Daily Forward, The Jewish Day), a Hebrew teachers' seminary, Jankowitz' Yiddish Bookshop, the Hebrew National Kosher Sausage Co., and a fading group of bearded oldsters purchasing from street vendors outsize pretzels and freshly baked yams.

East Side, U.S.A. The Alliance did much to tie the East Side into U.S. life. Today it caters to four generations. The youngest get pre-kindergarten schooling, consisting mainly of play. The oldest get religious services (most Alliance habitues are Jewish, some are Italian, a few Chinese and Irish), and a quiet room in which to drink tea, play chess. In between are a multitude (more than 3,000 turn up daily), seeking various kinds of activity and enlightenment. Among them:

> Dress rehearsals of leading concert musicians before their uptown appearances. The 6-c- programs are about the only thing the Alliance does not give away.

> Art classes taught by Sculptor Chaim Gross (who discovered the Alliance the day after he left Ellis Island), Etchers William Auerbach-Levy, Painter Abbo Ostrowsky. The alumni of these classes include Sculptor Jacob Epstein, Painters Raphael and Isaac Soyer, Peter Blume, Philip Evergood.

> A hobby-craft shop where eight-to-16-year-olds learn how to handle wood, paint, metals, make model aircraft.

> A Red Cross Sewing Circle where elderly women at sewing machines try to beat the production of 74-year-old Max Pollon, graduate of the sweatshops of the '90s.

> A supervised study room for children whose homes are too noisy.

> A class in Jewish history for children who never get any in their public school classes.

> Glee clubs and dramatics (when Eddie Cantor wore velvet pants on his way to play Fauntleroy at the Alliance, a Jefferson Street toughie blacked his eye).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.