DIAMOND STREET

The Story of the Little Town with the Big Red Light District

by Bruce Edward Hall
with a new foreword by Margaret B. Schram

“How was it that, at one time, institutionalized vice virtually became a department of Hudson city government? And perhaps most importantly, why didn't anyone think this was unusual?”
Bruce Edward Hall, 1994

This is the astonishing illicit history of Hudson, New York, which for many years was the unlikely setting for a world of prostitution, gambling, murder, and government corruption—with more than a touch of the Keystone Kops thrown in.

In the century or so before 1950, Hudson was famous as a shopping center of vice. There were at least two major illegal horse rooms, a big-stakes floating crap game, and as many as fifteen houses of ill repute.
Meanwhile, the church suppers took place and the parades marched up and down as Hudson's respectable citizenry convinced themselves that there was nothing out of the ordinary in this town described as, “ten streets wide and ten streets deep... a Norman Rockwell painting in motion.”

CRITICAL PRAISE:

This small city on the banks of the Hudson River is casting a nostalgic eye back to its bawdy history.
The New York Times

Hall has produced a lively and engaging local history ... Essential for regional collections and an entertaining addition to social history collections.
Library Journal

Some of his anecdotes are hilarious. Diamond Street is a gem.
The Hudson Valley Regional Review

A racy page from Hudson’s history.
Associated Press

paper, 6 x 9, 240 pages, maps & photographs,
$17.95,
ISBN 1-883789-01-X