When I was 14, I went to New York and completely fell in love with the city. At about the same time, I discovered George Gershwin when I played my Dad’s record of the Rhapsody in Blue, Piano Concerto in F and An American in Paris, and equally fell in love with this exciting and romantic music.
George Gershwin by Fiona Graves
George Gershwin was born in New York and lived there for most of his life. It’s obvious that city life had a great influence on his music; his cousin, the artist, Henry Botkin said that George heard music in the noise of New York. However, as George Balanchine, the Russian choreographer also remarked, melodically, George was Russian. George’s parents, Rose and Morris, were Russian Jewish immigrants, as were my grandparents. George was born Jacob Gershwine and my grandfather was also Jacob, but he was called Jack.
Jacob Gershwine
Jacob Kanonick
With my affinity for George Gershwin and my love of New York, I’ve recently started looking for the places where George lived and worked, including concert halls, publishers and theatres, as well as homes of his friends. My tour has taken me to several areas of the city not always seen by tourists, many of which make me wish more than ever that I was a New Yorker too.
My sources of information are:
- Gershwin by Edward Jablonski
- The Gershwins by Robert Kimball and Alfred Simon
- Nice Work If You Can Get It by Michael Feinstein
- The Gershwins And Me by Michael Feinstein
- A Talent For Genius by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger
- George Gershwin by Isaac Goldberg and Edith Garson
- Gershwin Remembered by Edward Jablonski
- On My Way by Joseph Horowitz
- The Gershwin Years by Edward Jablonski and Lawrence De Stewart
- The Memory Of All That by Katharine Weber
- A Smattering Of Ignorance by Oscar Levant
- George Gershwin by Rodney Greenberg
- The Gershwins, Words Upon Music by Lawrence D Stewart
- Harold Arlen: Rhythm, Rainbows and Blues by Edward Jablonski
- New York Theater Walks by Howard Kissel
- George Gershwin by Howard Pollack
- Doug Galloway, Hollywood Classic Tours
- Tim Dolan, Broadway Up Close Walking Tours
- Museum of the City of New York
- Library of Congress
George’s favourite Steinway
Gershwin in New York 
The Gershwin in London page mentions him “attending a party in George’s honour at the Kit Kat Club. This was in the basement of the Capitol Theatre which was on the corner of Haymarket and Jermyn Street.”
However, the three photographs are of the wrong building.
The Kit Cat Club was in the basement of the Capitol cinema on Haymarket, bordered by Jermyn Street to the north and St James’s Market to the south. The building on your web page is the next block north, with Jermyn Street on the south and Coventry Street on the north.
In the mid-1930s, the Capitol cinema (it was built as a cinema with very limited stage facilities) was demolished and replaced with the Gaumont cinema which had the stalls in the basement and the circle at street level, with offices over. It is the exterior walls of that gutted-and-altered building which are at Jermyn St/St James’s Market. (The gutting was in the early 1960s and created the Odeon cinema in the basement with retail and offices over.)
This is the Google Streetview of the correct site. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5097262,-0.1329092,3a,90y,203.98h,95.53t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqsp28IdbsA-AvjITETSvEQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
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Dear Hector, thanks so much for this information. I’ll have to go back and take my own photos of this building.
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I am researching the Kit Cat at the moment, and some of the generally understood facts are wrong. The venue ceased to be the Kit Cat Club early in 1927. It was a private members’ club, had been raided in December 1926, and lost its licence. It reopened in October 1927 as an up-market public restaurant with nighttime music dancing and caberet – the Kit Cat Restaurant. It was the Kit Cat Restaurant that Gershwin attended in March 1928, not the Kit Cat Club. The latter title did get used in print, and there is at least one example of a publication subsequently carrying an apology to the restaurant. It stayed a restaurant until closure in mid-1930s, when the building was was radically redeveloped as the Gaumont cinema.
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Dear Jane Compton, Thank you kindly for the gift of my initials in Chocolate that you left for me at Carnegie Hall. I was touched by your thoughtfulness, and am enjoying your blog with the resonant photos. Nice work! Warmly, Michael Feinstein
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