From the New York Tribune’s Illustrated Supplement on April 17, 1904:

Waldorf Room at the Newsboys’ Lodging House

Some Picturesque Characteristics of the Little Fellows Who Sell “Uxtrys” in the Streets of New-York.

Whatever the newsboy may lack in appearance, he has a bottom all the instincts of an aristocrat. Let the sunshine of prosperity beam on him even for a moment, and he buds with the true flowers of a patrician. If he makes a couple of dollars by the help of the Japanese fleet, whose latest manoeuvres has furnished him with a startling bit of news, he spends his money with a lavish hand. instead of a box at the opera, he buys tickets for the “gang” just beneath the grimy roof of some Bowery theatre.

A striking illustration of the “newsies” latent gentility is furnished by a new feature of the Newsboys’ Lodging House, near Chatham Square, which has been called the “Waldorf room.” Although plenty of white, clean beds were to be had in the two big halls for 5 and 10 cents a night, yet an exclusive circle of newsboy society demanded apartments of great privacy. Some of them had obtained work in nearby business houses, where they were enjoying incomes of $10 and $15 a week; and as “Dutch Pete,” who is now loading delivery wagons across the alley from the lodging house expressed it:

“W’en you’se got de wad, you’se might as well lif’ like a gent. An’ yer can’t be a gent widdout piracy. yer can’t mix up wid de bunch and perserve yer rights as a gent.”

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