Nights in the Big City: Paris, Berlin, London 1840-1930 - Joachim Schlor

A real sociological study of how night changed in the city with the introduction first of gas lighting, and then of electric lighting.  While the text is a little too detailed and dense for my level of interest, there are still some interesting ideas.  He also quotes and refers to many important cultural and literary figures of the time as part of his research.

Until the mid-1800s cities pretty much shut down once it was dark.  Many had laws about being inside at home from dark until dawn.  This was largely as a measure of social control in a time when forces of order would have trouble watching the goings-on in the street.  With the initial introduction of gas lighting, and later with electric lighting, the streets became much busier at night.  Walking the lit up main streets became a destination and an amusement in itself.  Prostitution and petty crime also flourished in this early stage of city street lighting - while the main streets were lit, the smaller streets remained very dark, easy places for hiding and disappearing.  Near the end of the century, nightlife began to move off the street again and into lit-up interiors - cafes, clubs, restaurants, brothels, bals dansants, theatres, etc.  This was the preferred outcome for the forces of order, as interior spaces are much easier to control and supervise than the street, interestingly.

Many of the chapters in the book deal with the competing claims of freedom, excitement and the need for security, morality and social order.  I was less interested in these chapters.  The second-last chapter, Nightwalking, was the most interesting for me.  It traces the unusual affinity of some walking the city at night.  He discusses the concept of flâneur, and mentions Apollinaire.  Flâner as a meeting of open-minded observation with erudition - nice description.  Schlor also notes how many sources discuss how the growing presence of very bright light combined with the retreat to interior space again, destroyed the art of the flâneur, as the streets became both emptier and less mysterious, less suggestive.  He also notes the general consensus that by 1920 in both Berlin and London, the riotousness, the unpredictability and the frisson of night life was gone, replaced by commercialized, stereotyped entertainments of the night.  Captialism at work...

There is an excellent bibliography at the book for exploring some of this further