Mr. McElwaine came to Buffalo circa 1894. He married the former Clara Nixon in 1897, and the couple took up residence on Clinton Street, in the heart of the city’s small mixed-race enclave. Within a year, Harvey established the Elm Street Social Club. Social clubs (saloons which sold liquor only to ‘members’—a dodge to get around blue laws) were by no means unusual for this northeast corner of the Tenderloin—the larger of Buffalo’s two red-light districts. There were plenty of legitimate businesses there too (light manufacturing, livery stables, and so on), but the sector’s fame or infamy originated from the saloons and brothels lining its side streets and alleys.

What is unusual—and to my knowledge hitherto unknown and unrecognized—is that Harvey McElwaine decided that his new club would serve African-American, Caucasian, and Chinese patrons. All at the same time!

It’s hard to comprehend today just how groundbreaking this decision was in 1895, and it attracted plenty of attention (the great majority of the ESSC’s press coverage varied from matter-of-fact to openly admiring, by the way). The newspapers couldn’t get enough of the goings-on at the ESSC or the antics of its founder, who by 1900 had been unofficially crowned ‘king’ of the entire district. By 1902, nothing went on along the Michigan Street corridor without King Harvey’s knowledge, blessing, or involvement—everything from smuggling Chinese people across the river from Canada, to running opium dens, to hosting Sunday Schools and after-school activities for the neighborhood’s African-American, Chinese, and Italian children. (Not to mention the hi jinks at the ESSC, including drinking, dancing, fighting, and fun in the concert hall in the rear and in the bedrooms upstairs.) Busy man!

But we come not only to praise Harvey McElwaine, because he deserves to be presented in something like his original human complexity. Along with the Canal District, the Tenderloin was the toughest part of Buffalo, and anyone who aspired to become or remain ‘king’ of such a place had to be as tough as they come. Harvey personally cracked the skulls of scores of rowdies, stabbed a half-dozen, and likely was involved in at least one murder for hire. At the same time, he seems to have been particularly devoted to his wife Clara and to their 1901-model baby, Harvey Jr. More on that in a minute.

Harvey was ‘pinched’ a hundred times for a hundred offenses, too—liquor and prostitution, assault and battery, and the ‘rolling’ (i.e., slipping something into a mark’s drink and relieving him of his wallet while passed out, mainly) of dandy young Buffalonians ‘slumming’ along Michigan Street. But all these arrests seem to have been mostly for show, because Mr. McE never did any serious jail time. This was partly because his outsized, genial personality tended to win over judges—and also that the ESSC offered plenty of refreshment to Buffalo cops ‘on the house’, who in return helped to keep something like peace. In addition, the racially integrated ESSC was an enormous draw for all shades of Buffalonians and visitors alike.

None of this is to say that the ESSC wasn’t a place where you had to watch out for pickpockets, cardsharps, and social diseases. Nor were no-holds-barred brawls uncommon at the ESSC; the record shows that arms were broken, eyes gouged out, and one patron decapitated, though after fleeing the ESSC proper with his murderer hot on his heels. All this seemed to be part of the ‘experience’, however, and none of it seemed to affect Mr. McElwaine’s cash flow, which was, er, substantial. It may be interesting to learn that the money one could make from ‘tolerated’ vice in the Tenderloin drove commercial rents higher there than in many more respectable neighborhoods. Harvey paid $1,000 a year—about $50,000 today—to rent the nondescript ESSC building. 

It was a good thing that McElwaine made so much money, because the King sure liked to spend it. He took to wearing the finest clothing and jewelry (the coat and hat he is wearing in our image are pretty darn swell), and perhaps he was also in the ‘money is like manure’ school of thought, because he spread it around liberally. In fact, Mr. McElwaine didn’t seem to care about money per se, or at least not for hoarding it for himself. The newspapers report that Clara McElwaine was among the finest-dressed ladies in Buffalo.

Yet if we can say one thing for sure about life, it’s that neither good times nor bad last forever. In December 1902, one-year-old Harvey Junior died of pneumonia, and this loss struck Clara especially hard—so hard that she could not bear no longer to remain at the family residence. When Harvey returned from work in the wee hours of July 14, 1903—a little more than six months after the death of their son—he found Clara gone. She had left behind a note of apology and a $20 gold piece, but had taken with her most of her things, Harvey’s revolver, and some $4,000-$5,000 in cash that they kept at the house (about $200,000-$250,000 today).

True to form, when newspaper reporters caught up with Mr. McElwaine, all he professed to care about was his wife’s safe return. ‘She got my money, but that’s only trash, and I can make more,’ he said. When asked about his wife’s probable motives, his first attempt was a little wide of the bullseye:

‘She lived like a queen,’ he told the Buffalo Enquirer. ‘She had everything she wanted—money and jewels and clothes. She never cooked a meal nor touched a pan. She was my jewel and my pride and the envy of every [African-American] in Buffalo.’

A few days later, Harvey located Clara at a relative’s house in Chicago, and must have spoken with her (long-distance telephone was available then, though very expensive), because in subsequent news items the now-wiser Mr. McElwaine acknowledged that ‘the death of our young son had unbalanced her mind’. He welcomed her home, and while I’d like to say they lived happily ever after, change was in the wind.

In 1905, with the millions of male visitors to the Pan-American Exposition (and the Tenderloin) long gone, the Anti-Saloon League (the country’s largest anti-alcohol lobby) stepped up their pressure on the city and the police to ‘clean up’ the Tenderloin. After having successfully stonewalled efforts to sanitize the Tenderloin for thirty years, the police, the city, and the legions of fun-with-an-edge seekers had run out of excuses, and so it came to pass that Buffalo’s first—the nation’s first, I will claim until conclusively proven wrong—racially integrated social club was among a hundred establishments to have their liquor licenses revoked.

To conclude: A couple of posts ago, a reader pointed out that Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition had been omitted from Wikipedia’s list of World’s Fairs. Of course this is nothing less than outrageous, and it’s long past time for the Wikipedia people to add the Pan to their list. But while they’re at it, they ought also to head their article on ‘Black and Tan Clubs’ with Mr. Harvey McElwaine’s Elm Street Social Club. It was the first, by a long shot, over Chicago and New York, which until now have gotten all the credit. I hope that changes.