Log Cabin - Billie Holiday Sang Here

The New York Times' F.Y.I. column on 3/17/13, at Metro. p.2., discussed jazz speakeasies, based on a book, David Freeland's Automats, Taxi Dances and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure (2009). Of this place, it said: Near the end of 1932, an out-of-work Billie Holiday was hired by the owner, Jerry Preston, for $2 a night plus tips. 'When she sang, her notes were lush, mellow tones that seemed to fill the room with moonlight,' Mr. Freeland wrote. It was perhaps the city's most egalitarian place of its time, he added: White patrons were always seated next to black patrons at one of the 25 checker-board-cloth-covered tables, and all guests were enveloped in the aroma of marijuana, fried chicken, hog maw and bacon. Celebrities were treated like everyone else.'