XLII / 174
THE BON VIVANT'S COMPANION
Professor Thomas sold his property and opened another
and equally elaborate place at No. 1239 Broadway,where he
remained for eight years. He finally disposed of this estab
lishment to John Morrissey, a noted political and sporting
figure who was in turn a successful gang captain, a prize
fighter with a victory over John C.Heenan to his credit, the
owner of luxurious gambling houses in New York and Sara
toga Springs, a member of Congress and finally, with the
original Honest John Kelly (not the gambler of that name)
co-leader of Tammany Hall. Morrissey came to New York
in the early fifties, when more than 6,000 gaming places
were in open operation on Manhattan Island. Of these some
300 were first-class establishments catering to men of sound
financial substance and furnished with an elegance unsur
passed in later years. A majority of these early houses were
in Park Row,Park Place and lower Broadway,and in Bar
clay,Vesey and Liberty Streets, which are now entirely given
over to business. They included such celebrated resorts as
those operated by Orlando Moore,Handsome Sam Suydam,
Jack Wallis, John Colton and Pat Herne. Wallis was a Chi
naman who had been a faro dealer for French Jose, but had
won the business from his employer on the toss of a coin.
Many of the best houses were owned or backed by Reuben
Parsons, the gambling monarch of the period, who was
widely known as the Great American Faro Banker. Morris-
sey's most noted place was in Broadway just north of Tenth
Street, not far from the present Grace Episcopal Church
and Wanamaker's Store. His house in Saratoga Springs,
which he founded in 1867, later came under the ownership
of Richard Canfield, probably the most famous gambling-
house proprietor New York has ever
produced.Inall of these
elegant establishments faro was the principal game, and for
more than twenty years after the Civil War it occupied the
place in the affections of American gamblers that bridge
and poker hold today,
xxxviii