Nov 21 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2687 -
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Sale 2687 - Lot 189

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(NEW YORK CITY.) Pictures of New York Life & Character. Illustrated title page, 18 [of 19] tinted lithographed plates, all with advertisements on verso. Folio, 12x10 inches, publisher's gilt cloth, worn, rebacked; lacking one plate, 5 of the advertising pages formerly used as scrapbook leaves, Broadway and Houston plate torn with tape repair. [New York]: George W. Averell & Co., circa 1877
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Additional Details

A compendium of New York street scenes and colorful characters, with plates devoted to immigrants in quarantine at Castle Garden, Jewish tailors and auctioneers, a Chinese opium den, an African-American bill poster, and much more. One plate appears to depict both male and female sex workers loitering at the notorious corner of Broadway and Houston, as cited by one modern scholar: "Even in the Victorian era, at least one guidebook to the city made references to locations where homosexual men gathered (Averell & Co., 1877)"--Luongo, "The Use of Commercial Sex Venues and Male Escorts by Gay Tourists in New York City," in Tourism and Sex, page 111.

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