March 2023 – A New Yorker State of Mind

Art of the Machine

Above, at left, self-aligning ball bearing from SKF Industries, featured in MoMA's 1934 Exhibition of Machine Art; at right, judges for the exhibit were aviator Amelia Earhart and professors John Dewey and Charles R. Richards, holding first, second and third prizes, respectively. (MoMA)

The notion that machine-made objects have aesthetic value has been with us for some time, dating back to avant-garde movements of the early 20th century such as Futurism, which influenced other schools, including the Bauhaus and De Stijl. However, the idea that a museum would display a propeller or a vacuum cleaner as a work of art was startling to many in 1934.

It had been a little over twenty years since New York art patrons experienced their first shock of the new at the 1913 Armory Show. By 1929 the city had established the Museum of Modern Art, which opened the exhibition Machine Art on March 5, 1934, at MoMA’s second location—the old Barbour mansion at 11 West 53rd Street (razed in the late 1930s and replaced by today’s museum).

Novelist and art critic Robert M. Coates (1897–1973) paid a visit to the Machine Art exhibition and wrote of the experience in “The Talk of the Town.” Coates was no stranger to the avant garde, having himself embraced literary innovation and experimentation as a novelist. James Thurber is credited with bringing Coates to The New Yorker in 1927—the two became close friends—and Coates would stay forty years with the magazine. Excerpts:

EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY…Clockwise, from top left: According to MoMA director **Alfred H. Barr,** Jr, the 1934 *Machine Art* exhibition celebrated the machine’s abstract and geometric beauty; MoMA found its second home—the Barbour mansion at 11 West 53rd Street—in 1932; sign on West 53rd advertising the exhibition; outboard propeller by Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa); collection of scientific beakers and flasks from Corning Glass Works. (MoMA)

KA-CHING!…*Machine Art* featured Model 1934 from National Cash Register; at right, Electrochef range, model B-2, designed by **Emil Piron** for Electromaster Inc. Objects featured in the exhibition were selected by noted architect **Phillip Johnson**, who was the founding chairman (1932-34) of the museum’s Department of Architecture. (MoMA)

IN A NEW LIGHT…Springs and wires took on new perspectives at the *Machine Art* exhibition. From left, the apparent first-prize winner (based on the photo of Earhart at the top of this entry)—a section of a large spring; cross-section of wire rope; and typewriter carriage and motor springs, all produced by American Steel & Wire Company, a subsidiary of US Steel. (MoMA)

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Salad Days

Swiss-American restaurateur Oscar Tschirky (1866-1943), who was known throughout the world as Oscar of the Waldorf, worked as maître d’hôtel of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City from 1893 to 1943. He is credited with having created the Waldorf salad, along with any number of cocktail recipes. “The Talk of the Town” noted his latest concoction:

WINNING OSCAR…From 1893 to 1943 **Oscar Tschirky** was the Waldorf-Astoria’s public face and a gracious host who made both the great and the not-so-great feel welcome. At left, in 1923; at right, Tschirky samples the first shipment of beer to arrive at the Waldorf-Astoria when the brew became legal again in April 1933. (Library of Congress/Karl Schriftgiesser)

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Unburdened

In the March 17 issue, writer and poet Langston Hughes (1901–1967) published the first of three fiction pieces that would appear in The New Yorker (one posthumously in 2016). In the short story “Why, You Reckon,” Hughes tells the tale of two hungry Black men who rob a rich white man by pushing him into a basement coal bin—one of the Black men takes the white man’s money, jewelry, shoes and overcoat, then rushes off, leaving his companion without any of the loot. To the companion’s surprise and befuddlement, the white man is left excited by the incident, because it is the first real thing that has happened to him. Here are the final lines of the story:

HARLEM RENAISSANCE LEADER **Langston Hughes** in a 1936 photo by **Carl Van Vechten.** A prolific writer and poet, Hughes published three short stories and three poems in *The New Yorker.* (Wikipedia)

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From Our Advertisers

New Yorker ad sales were booming, and blooming with color…we kick it off with this ad from Coty touting “3 New Boxes for Face Powder!”…so why are there four boxes in the ad?…

…the obvious answer to the question posed below would be “wealth and privilege…and youth”…the “Eleanor Roosevelt” featured in this Pond’s ad is obviously not the wife of FDR, but rather Eleanor Katherine Roosevelt, the teenaged daughter of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Henry Latrobe Roosevelt…

…speaking of the high seas, I have to admit I sigh a little when I see ads like this, obviously staged, but suggest a style of travel that is as extinct as the T. Rex…

…perhaps those folks on the boat were enjoying a splash of Perrier in their evening cocktails…

…or maybe the domestic White Rock was on ice…why is the rich old coot so much shorter than his wife?…I guess it emphasizes her relative youthfulness and her maternal obligations to a child-like older man…

…their proportions are similar to Jiggs and Maggie, but that’s another story…

…R.J. Reynolds was back with their “jangled nerves” theme on behalf of Camel cigarettes…

…maybe your tires will hold, but have you checked your brakes lately?…

…in the 1930s the anti-war organization World Peaceways ran a series of provoking ads on the artificial glories of war…some magazines, including The New Yorker, ran these ads free of charge or at reduced rates…

…a closer view of the explanatory copy at the bottom of the ad…

…speaking of war, James Thurber opens our cartoons on a Connecticut battlefield…

…Al Frueh contributed this illustration for a two-part profile of entertainer and theatrical producer George M. Cohan…

…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) offered this spot art for the opening calendar section…

…Peter Arno gave us two fellows on thin ice…

…cartoonist Gregory d’Alessio made his first appearance in The New Yorker…

…Barbara Shermund was back with some tax advice…

…which this gentleman (by Alain) might have found useful…

…and we close with Mary Petty, and a little brown-noser with a taste for greens…

Next Time: Through the Looking Glass…

The Power Broker

Above: Robert Moses in 1939 with a model of his proposed Battery Bridge Park Reconstruction; at right, 1934 Bryant Park renovation, view to the south on 6th Avenue from 42nd Street. (Wikipedia/NYC Parks Department)

The title for this entry comes from Robert Caro’s landmark 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, which questioned the benefit of Moses’s monumental projects.

Like him or not, few unelected officials have wielded more power than Moses, who through various appointed positions, including New York City Parks Commissioner, he was able to impose his will on mayors, legislators, congressmen, wealthy burghers, and even, on occasion, The White House. In turn he imposed his will on the city itself, clearing whole neighborhoods to lay down new roads that extended from Manhattan to the tip of Long Island, where neither farmer nor landed gentry could stand in his way. A profile written by Milton MacKaye examined what made Moses tick. An excerpt:

DON’T YOU DARE PUT ME ON HOLD…Relentless doesn’t begin to describe **Robert Moses’s** pursuit of power. Clockwise, from top left, Moses circa 1930; one of the swimming pools at the west bathhouse at Long Island’s Jones Beach, a project that helped launch Moses’s road to power; Long Island Expressway, which transformed Long Island from farm country (and a retreat for the rich) into a land of bedroom communities and public parks; the east parking field at Jones Beach. (Britannica/Library of Congress/U.S. National Archives)

In another excerpt, MacKaye noted that Moses had been named a member of the Triborough Bridge Authority; Moses would ultimately become chairman, and through this position would possess enormous, unchecked power and influence. Moses was skilled at creating legal structures that would favor his ambitions, burying language into legislative bills and other documents that would make him impervious to influence from mayors, legislators, governors and other elected officials.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PLAYGROUND…Moses intensely disliked former New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, who used the Central Park Casino (top left) as his personal playground. Moses exacted his vengeance by having the historic casino razed in 1935 and replaced with the Rumsey Playground; at right, the 1936 Triborough Bridge (**Berenice Abbot** photo), a cluster of three separate spans connecting the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens. It was developed through Moses’s Triborough Bridge Authority, which was impervious to influence from mayors, legislators and governors. While the city and state were strapped for funds, Moses reaped millions from tolls, which financed his other ambitions; bottom left, Moses in 1938. (Wikipedia/transalt.org/Library of Congress)

Final note, I highly recommend Caro’s The Power Broker—it’s a doorstop of a book, but also one of the best biographies of the 20th century and a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand how present-day New York came to be, and how it really works.

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Let’s Talk About the Weather

Robert Benchley, writing under the pseudonym Guy Fawkes, took a turn at “The Wayward Press” column, commenting on the sensationalistic coverage of the weather by the local press. In all fairness to the press, New York City had endured a blizzard as well as the coldest temperature ever recorded for the city: 15 below zero (Fahrenheit) on Feb. 9, 1934. (According to newspaper accounts, it was 14.3 below).

Benchley also commented on journalist Ernest Gruening (1887–1974), who was the editor of the New York Post for only four months in 1934, but during those four months he really shook things up.

EASY BOSS…**Ernest Gruening** was editor of the *New York Post* for only four months in 1934, but during that time he made life better for his newsroom employees by implementing an unheard of 40-hour work week. Gruening went on to serve as the governor of the Alaska Territory from 1939 until 1953, and as a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1959 until 1969. (Photo from 1935 via Wikipedia)

Robert Benchley thought the press made too much of the city’s snowy weather, but these newsreels tell a different story:

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Punch Drunk

Critic John Mosher found slim pickings at the local movie houses, opting for Jimmy Durante’s Palooka as the best of crop:

RIBALDRY AT RINGSIDE…Clockwise from top left, Knobby Walsh (**Jimmy Durante**) tries to press his advantage during the weigh-in of boxer Al McSwatt (portrayed by **William Cagney,** the look-alike younger brother of **James Cagney**) in 1934’s Palooka; Durante thinks he’s found a winning fighter in Joe Palooka (**Stuart Erwin**); Joe’s father, Pete Palooka (**Robert Armstrong**) demonstrates why he’s nicknamed “Goodtime” with the help of Trixie (**Thelma Todd**); Durante with **Lupe Vélez**, who portrayed glamorous cabaret singer and fortune hunter Nina Madero. (IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

We start with a couple ads from the back pages…the promoters of Chicago’s famed Stevens Hotel offered a unique perspective as they appealed to New Yorkers to come check out the “Century of Progress” World’s Fair, which proved so popular that it planned to reopen in May for a second year…at right, The Gotham catered to the ladies with a special cocktail bar that only allowed men in the company of a woman…

NICE DIGS…At left, The Stevens Hotel (now Hilton Chicago) and, at right, The Gotham (now The Peninsula) are happily still with us today. (Wikipedia)

…cigarette manufacturers continued to work on their biggest growth market with ads like this one from the Lorillard Tobacco Company…here a perceptive woman chooses to ignore the “brazen claims” of other tobacco companies and makes an informed decision to inhale an Old Gold…

…Liggett & Myers, on the other hand, stuck with this subservient pose, suggesting both are happy with their cigarette, and their station in life…

…another colorful ad from the makers of Schlitz beer…following the end of Prohibition Schlitz quickly became the world’s top-selling brewery, a position it would hold into the 1960s until it switched to cheaper brewing methods…

…the makers of Fisher car bodies (owned by General Motors) continued their lavish two-page spreads touting the homey comforts of their interiors…

…and no more staid ads from luxury carmaker Packard, who ran this full-color, full-bleed spot…

…it’s almost springtime for Hitler, and Germany welcomed American tourists with promises of “Dreaming Villages” (whatever those are), charming health spas and places of romance and beauty…hmmm, no mention of swastika flags hanging from every building, or parades of goose-stepping thugs…

…this public service ad promoted the effectiveness of the National Recovery Act, offering the uptick in underwear sales as a sure sign of economic growth…

…on to our cartoonists, we begin with Helen Hokinson experiencing the results of the recent blizzard…

…as did Henry Anton, with a befuddled meteorologist…

…Alain (Daniel Brustlein) gave us this wordless gem…

…while Garrett Price presented a sculptor’s greatest challenge…

…Alan Dunn gave us two women who expected more pizzazz from a recent funeral…

…Peter Arno contended with some Peeping Toms…

…and James Thurber looked in on recent maneuvers in his war between the sexes…

Next Time: Art of the Machine…

Rocky’s Cover-Up

On April 28, 1933, just two days before the RCA Building was to open to new tenants, artist Diego Rivera added a portrait of Vladimir Lenin to the mural he was painting in the building’s lobby.

Feb. 24, 1934 cover by **Garrett Price.**

When Nelson Rockefeller asked Rivera to replace Lenin with a portrait of an “everyman,” Rivera refused, stating that he would prefer to see the whole mural destroyed than to alter it. Two weeks later Rivera was paid and dismissed from the job; carpenters immediately covered the mural in a white cloth. Fast forward to Saturday, February 10, 1934, when workers showed up late in the evening and began chipping away at the plaster bearing the mural, reducing Rivera’s artwork to dust. E.B. White, in his “Notes and Comment,” had this to say about that fateful night:

DUST TO DUST…**Diego Rivera** working on his mural, *Man at the Crossroads*, in the RCA Building lobby in 1933. At right, workers quickly covered up the mural after Rivera was dismissed from the job. One of Rivera’s artist assistants, **Lucienne Bloch**, clandestinely took the photo before she was escorted from the building. (Wikipedia/6sqft.com)

ARTEM INTERRUPTUS…Mexican artist **Diego Rivera** stands with a copy of the mural he painted at Rockefeller Center that was eventually destroyed. (A. Estrada /Courtesy of Museo Frida Kalho)

Rea Irvin shared his own thoughts on the issue with this illustration below, which referenced the hateful rhetoric of Charles Coughlin, a Canadian-American Catholic priest and populist leader and one of the first public figures to make effective use of the airwaves to spew his invective.

FAMILIAR RING…**Charles Coughlin**, a Catholic priest and populist leader, promoted antisemitic and pro-fascist views while also acting as a champion to the poor and a foe of big business. In the midst of the Depression he spoke to the hopes and fears of lower-middle class Americans throughout the U.S. One supporter recalled: “When he spoke it was a thrill like Hitler. And the magnetism was uncanny. It was so intoxicating, there’s no use saying what he talked about…” (BBC/NPR)

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Dog Days

E.B. White also chimed in about boorish behavior he witnessed at the Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Garden. Terriers had dominated Westminster; the fox terrier that ultimately won the 1934 competition represented the 21st terrier of any type to win Best of Show since that category was introduced in 1907.

YOU AGAIN? Ch Flornell Spicy Bit of Halleston, a Wire Fox Terrier, took Best of Show at Madison Square Garden in 1934. (westminsterkennelclub.org)

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Anybody Home?

After the wealthy owner of the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer, died in 1911, his family moved out of his lavish East 73rd Street mansion, which was designed by Stanford White to resemble an Italian palazzo. The building sat empty until 1930, when investors planned to knock it down and replace it with an apartment building. The Depression foiled their plans, and another attempt to raze the mansion in the 1950s also miraculously failed, and the building was eventually converted into a co-op with sixteen apartments. Writing in “The Talk of the Town,” James Thurber pondered the Pulitzer mansion’s expected fate. An excerpt:

THEN AND NOW…With so many buildings reduced to dust these days in NYC, it’s good to see the Pulitzer mansion still standing. You can buy one of its sixteen apartments for roughly $6 million, if and when they become available. (ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com)

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From Our Advertisers

The makers of Camel cigarettes combined three previous ads into one, featuring endorsements from society matrons in Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York…

…while Fanny Brice and the cast of the 1934 Ziegfeld Follies offered a chorus of endorsements for Lux detergent in this two-page spread…

…the Graham-Paige Motors Corporation is long gone, but in the early 1930s the company was still going strong, introducing many innovations (described in the ad below) that would be copied by other carmakers…

…in the 1930s an exiled Russian noble, Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky, was known for his streamlined automobile designs…he influenced the look of the 1934 Nash Ambassador Eight, which was touted here as the choice of the budget-minded toff…note how the illustrator exaggerated the car’s length in this ad…

…as compared to an actual model of a Nash Eight…

A restored 1934 Nash Ambassador Eight. (classiccars.com)

…on to our cartoonists, Alan Dunn floated above the “Goings On About Town” section…

…William Steig gave us a tactless grocer…

…Howard Baer offered up some finer points from Madison Avenue…

…Gardner Rea illustrated a very special delivery…

…and James Thurber’s war continued to be waged on a snowy battlefield…

…on to our March 3, 1934 issue…

…which featured a profile of singer Kate Smith (1907–1986), written by none other than Joseph Mitchell (1908-1996), who began his career at The New Yorker in 1933. Smith was an American contralto often referred to as “The First Lady of Radio,” well known for her renditions of When the Moon Comes over the Mountain and Dream a Little Dream of Me. She was enormously popular during World War II for her rendition of God Bless America among other patriotic tunes.

Smith got her start in New York in 1926 when she appeared on Broadway in Honeymoon Lane. That year also saw the emergence of countless humiliating wisecracks about her weight that would dog her long career. A reviewer in The New York Times (Oct. 31, 1926) wrote, “A 19-year-old girl, weighing in the immediate neighborhood of 200 pounds, is one of the discoveries of the season…” In 1930, when Smith appeared in George White’s Flying High, she served as the butt of Bert Lahr’s often cruel jokes about her size.

An excerpt from the opening lines of Mitchell’s profile:

RISING STAR…At left, **Kate Smith** performing in the 1932 Paramount Pictures musical, *Hello Everybody!*; at right, on the cover of the October 1934 issue of *Radio Mirror.* (medium.com)

Toward the conclusion of the profile Mitchell suggested that Smith’s future was “doubtful.” She would prove that prediction wrong, however…

…23 years after her death her rendition of God Bless America would be discontinued pretty much everywhere when it was revealed that in the early 1930s she recorded such songs as That’s Why Darkies Were Born and Pickaninny Heaven (which was featured in Hello, Everybody!).

CANCELLED STAR…Since the late 1960s a rendition of *God Bless America* by Kate Smith served as a good luck charm for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team. “The team began to win on nights the song was played,” *The New York Times* wrote in Smith’s 1986 obituary. Smith sang the tune live during game six of the 1974 Stanley Cup finals, which the Flyers went on to win against the Boston Bruins. When Smith’s racist songs were rediscovered in 2019, a statue of the singer that stood outside the Flyers’ arena was covered and ultimately removed. (Daily Mail)

A note on Joseph Mitchell, whose first credited piece in The New Yorker was a Nov. 11, 1933 “A Reporter at Large” column titled “They Got Married in Elkton.” The article described a small Maryland border town that became known for discrete “quicky” marriages. Mitchell would become known for his finely crafted character studies and expressive stories found in commonplace settings. His 1943 McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon is a prime example.

MAN ABOUT TOWN…At left, **Joseph Mitchell** circa 1930, wearing a brown fedora he was rarely seen without; at right, Mitchell in Lower Manhattan near the old Fulton Fish Market, as photographed by his wife, **Therese Mitchell**, circa 1950. (Estate of Joseph Mitchell)

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Acquired Taste

Occasionally New Yorker film critic John Mosher found himself at odds with other reviewers, and such was the case when Mosher sat down to watch Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night. While he described the 1934 pre-Code romantic comedy as “nonsense” and “dreary,” other critics found it generally enjoyable, and although it took audiences awhile to catch on, the film eventually became a smash hit.

In all fairness to Mosher, even the film’s co-star, Claudette Colbert, complained to a friend after the film wrapped, “I just finished the worst picture in the world.” As it turned out, It Happened One Night became the first of only three films to win all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It is now widely considered one of the best films ever made. Go figure.

Back to Mosher, who thought so little of the film he didn’t even lead his column with the picture’s review:

PRE-CODE AND TOPLESS…An heiress (**Claudette Colbert**) and a reporter (**Clark Gable**) find themselves hitchhiking (and sharing a motel room) after their bus breaks down in *It Happened One Night*. The film famously featured a scene in which co-star Gable undresses for bed and takes off his shirt to reveal that he is bare-chested. An urban legend claims that, as a result, sales of men’s undershirts declined noticeably. (IMDB)

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More From Our Advertisers

If you wanted luxury with the price, you could buy a Nash Ambassador Eight for $1,800 (about thousand less than other luxury models) or opt for Studebaker’s Berline Limousine, practically a steal at $1,295…

…or you could opt for this fancy-looking Buick with “Knee-Action wheels”…Knee Action was a GM marketing term for independent front suspension, which made for a smoother ride…

…always colorful, the makers of Cinzano vermouth made their splash in The New Yorker…

…the folks at Lucky Strike continued their theme of colorful ads featuring attractive women enjoying their cigs…

…on to our cartoonists, Leonard Dove illustrated a domestic spat…

…Mary Petty captured a romantic interlude on the dance floor…

…and James Thurber introduced a new twist—espionage—into his “war”…

Next Time: The Power Broker…

And Now We Are Nine

Above: It took a few issues for the editors to sort out regular features and their order of appearance. The opening section of Issue No. 1 featured the famous Rea Irvin masthead that would introduce “The Talk of Town” for many issues to come. In Issue No. 1, however, “Of All Things” appeared first under the masthead, followed by “The Talk of the Town." Let us hope the magazine restores the original Rea Irvin masthead for its 100th anniversary.

Despite the lingering Depression The New Yorker entered its ninth year on strong financial footing. With nearly equal numbers of subscribers and single copy sales, circulation would approach 125,000 in 1934, with more than $2.2 million in advertising income.

Feb. 17, 1934 cover by **Rea Irvin** (naturally).

In his “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White commented on the “more vigorous times” the magazine was enjoying, declaring “it is fine to be nine.”

THE NEW YORKER SEVEN…In 1924, baking product heir **Raoul Fleischmann** put up $25,000 to help **Harold Ross** get his new magazine off the ground. To assuage Fleischmann’s doubts regarding his investment, Ross persuaded some of his Algonquin Round Table cronies to appear on the magazine’s purely ceremonial masthead. The seven who appeared on the first masthead were, from top left, **Ralph Barton, Marc Connelly, Rea Irvin,** and **George S. Kaufman;** bottom row, from left, are **Alice Duer Miller, Dorothy Parker**, and Alexander Woollcott.

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Daffy Dilettante

Another Algonquin Round Table crony, Harpo Marx, was a skilled artist when it came to comedy, pantomime, or the harp, but when he decided to take up a brush and palette he struggled to properly paint a female nude. In this account from “The Talk of the Town,” Harpo eventually abandoned his painting and switched places with the model.

BRUSHING UP ON HIS ART…Undated photo of **Harpo Marx** putting finishing touches on his painting of an accordion player; Harpo was a one of the Algonquin Round Table originals: a 1919 photo features (standing, left to right) **Art Samuels** and **Harpo Marx;** (sitting) **Charles MacArthur, Dorothy Parker,** and **Alexander Woollcott**. (Twitter/Wikipedia)

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Ode to Faraway Lands

A renowned author of children’s poetry, David McCord (1897-1997), was also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker for thirty years (1926-56). For the Feb. 17 issue he penned these sonnets to the Baedeker travel guide.

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Wimpy Vernacular

Architecture, art and cultural critic Lewis Mumford paused in his criticism of everything from liquor stores to cheap restaurants to offer some surprising praise to his city’s “black-and-white hamburger palaces.”

RED MEAT RIVALS White Tower and White Castle vied for customers in 1930s New York. Above, a 1933 photo of a White Tower in the 200 block of 2nd Avenue; below, a circa 1930 photo of a White Castle in the Bronx. (gothamist.com/Cision)

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From Our Advertisers

Advertising income reached an all-time high at The New Yorker in 1934, and it showed with the numerous color ads enticing travel to Bermuda…

…or to the French wine country…

…Hiram Walker presented their Canadian Club whisky on what appeared to be a cloth napkin…

…artist Hans Flato continued his unusual Ruppert’s Beer series of mannequin people (and dogs) going about their lives stuck to yellow discs…

…according to the Ruppert’s ad, for six bottle caps you could get a tin coaster like those pictured below…

…from magicians and salesmen to sportsmen and high society, the folks pushing Camel cigarettes seemed to try every angle to get their product into the mouths of as many consumers as possible…

…the makers of Spud menthol cigarettes, on the other hand, tried a little humor to get smokers hooked on their “mouth happiness”…

…as one of the world’s most popular car brands, Chevrolet has long been considered a car for the masses, although this ad campaign launched in 1934 suggested that the ubiquitous Chevy was just the car for a connoisseur of the finer things…

…the staid luxury auto maker Pierce Arrow broke with tradition by placing this very modern, minimalist ad…

…the folks at Steinway also adopted a modern look with this single column ad touting the durability of their grand pianos…

…The Viking Press took out this full-page ad to announce the publication of Alexander Woollcott’s While Rome Burns, a collection of some of Woollcott’s writings for The New Yorker and other magazines…

…according to the ad, for six bucks you could get one of 500 limited edition signed copies…as of this writing, the inscribed and signed edition below was available for $350…