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4 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT
resistance to the electric current or your lifting capacity. Finally, at the magic of the same little red coin, you could peer into a black eye-piece and witness such tabloid silent drama as The Servant GirFs Dream or Fun in a Boarding School. This, the first entity of the moving picture, was the most popular machine in the Penny Arcade. The dramas lasted as long as three quarters of a minute; and on Saturday nights a queue, with pennies in hand, waited its turn at the eye-piece.
The managers of this pioneer enterprise chose their location shrewdly. Union Square was once heart and centre of the Broadway theatrical district. However, a decade or so before the Penny Arcade arrived, the theatres had suddenly hopped a dozen blocks northward and settled about Madison Square. The wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe was just then rising to its full tide. From the south and east, the immigrants pressed on Union Square, which presently became their playground and political rallying-point. The Academy of Music lay a block eastward on Fourteenth Street. Once its very name suggested wealth and social eminence; now it became a German theatre. Between its site and the square lay old mansions and business buildings which in their time had housed wealthy residents or dispensed the latest Parisian fashions. Saloons and dance halls took them over. Some of the dancing establishments were very tough; some merely cheap and joyful. Tom Sharkey, his ribs permanently dam