Baxter Street Dudes

Baxter Street Dudes
FoundersBaby-Faced Willie
Founding locationNew York City
Years active~1870s
TerritoryBaxter Street
MembershipNewsboys, bootblacks
ActivitiesTax evasion, thievery, entertainment, charity
RivalsMulberry Blend

The Baxter Street Dudes was a New York City teenage street gang, consisting of former newsboys and bootblacks, who ran the Grand Duke's Theatre from the basement of a dive bar on Baxter Street in Manhattan during the 1870s.[1] Led by founder Baby-Face Willie, gang members operated the Grand Duke's Theatre and established the venue as their headquarters.[2] Members of the Baxter Street Dudes wrote and performed plays, musicals and variety shows which were enjoyed by other street toughs and slummers throughout the city.[3][2][4] The theater house eventually became a popular underworld hangout, from which the gang found financial success.

  1. ^ "The Grand Duke Theatre.; a Once Noted Place of Amusement Makes Room for a Tenement". The New York Times. July 28, 1887. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  2. ^ a b Maffi, Mario. Gateway To The Promised Land: Ethnic cultures of New York's Lower East Side. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. (pg. 90) ISBN 90-5183-677-5
  3. ^ Donovan, Frank D. Wild Kids: How Youth Has Shocked Its Elders--Then and Now. Harrisburg: Stackpole Books, 1967. (pg. 176)
  4. ^ Cullen, Frank; Florence Hackman and Donald McNeilly. Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America. Vol. 1. New York: Routledge, 2007. (pg. 101) ISBN 0-415-93853-8