One evening “Stanny” gave Evelyn a thorough tour...

17th January 2012

Quote reblogged from katherine st asaph with 9 notes

One evening “Stanny” gave Evelyn a thorough tour of his married man’s bachelor pad, occupying several floors in a row house on sketchy West 24th Street, in “the Tenderloin.” One room had mirrors on every wall. Another had a four-poster bed with mirrors in the headboard and the canopy, and yet another room held the red velvet swing that later became infamous. (On the ground floor was the FAO Schwarz toy store, which fact would not be credible in fiction.)

—

The Awl

This is a really disturbing story, but maybe I’m just partly reacting to the fact that I AM LESS THAN A BLOCK AWAY FROM THIS PLACE RIGHT NOW. (The building collapsed a few years ago, apparently.)

“The only strategy for Thaw was to plead insanity, but the Thaw family wanted to stress that it was a “temporary brainstorm” rather than a possibly hereditary madness. The prosecution—and again, this is not a novel—described a new condition, “Dementia Americana,” that could cause an American male to be driven to kill by the violation of the sacredness of his wife. Thaw himself wanted to cry out that he was perfectly sane and simply avenging an angel’s “ruination” at the hands of a demon.”

Uhhhhhhhhhhh.

Tagged: nyc history wtf

Source: katherinestasaph

like a pair of bottle rockets