Twentieth century New York saw a lot of paradise paved (see Moses, Robert), but there is one spot in New York that saw paradise reclaimed — not from a parking lot but from an eleven-story prison that once stood at 10 Greenwich Avenue.
June 18, 1932 cover by William Crawford Galbraith.
The Jefferson Market Garden in Greenwich Village was once the site of a women’s prison designed to be a more humane corrections facility, but between its opening in 1932 and its closing in 1971 the Women’s House of Detention went from noteworthy to notorious.
It was designed by a firm known for its Art Deco buildings — Sloan and Robertson — and although it still looked rather stark and institutional on the inside, attempts were made to gussy it up with artworks commissioned by the WPA. The New Yorker’sE.B. White found a certain “sanitary elegance” to the place.
WELCOME INMATES!…When the Women’s House of Detention opened in 1932 it focused on more humane practices, including vocational training and other reform measures. Clockwise from top right, a 1938 photo shows how the prison once loomed over the Sixth Avenue El; inmates stare out of the windows in 1941; WPA artist Lucienne Bloch working on one of the murals that lined prison walls; example of a mural. (amny.com/NYT/correctionhistory.org)
Thirty years after its opening, things took a turn for the worst at the Women’s House of Detention. Michael Kimmelman wrote in the New York Times (Dec. 18, 2019) that by the late 1960s the jail had become squalid, overcrowded and violent. He wrote: “I can still hear the desperate pleas of inmates shouting through the windows as I walked home from school every day.”
BIG, BAD HOUSE…Clockwise from top, left, protestor outside the New York Women’s House of Detention at the Prisoners’ Rights and “Free the Panther 21” demonstration in 1970; illustrious inmates at the prison included Ethel Rosenberg (pictured Aug. 8, 1950), Angela Davis, and Valerie Solanas (who shot Andy Warhol in 1968); demonstrators outside the prison in 1970; 1956 publicity still taken by the Department of Corrections. (Diana Davies via Smith College/correctionhistory.org)
In the late 1960s Village residents began holding town hall meetings to discuss the removal of the overcrowded prison, many complaining of the friends and families of inmates who lingered outside day and night, yelling up to their loved ones behind bars. The protests were successful; the prison closed in 1971 and was demolished three years later.
A BIT OF EARTH…Top photo is an overhead view of the Jefferson Market Garden, planted on the site of the former Women’s House of Detention. Below, a verdant pathway takes a turn through Jefferson Market Garden. Photos courtesy of amny.com and Jefferson Market Garden.
* * *
How Dry I Ain’t
Franklin D. Roosevelt was a canny politician, seemingly able at times to please both sides of a divisive issue. This was the case in 1932, when teetotaling New Yorkers touted FDR’s long record of supporting such causes as the Anti-Saloon League, while city dwellers such as E.B. White knew better…
LIBERAL LIBATION…Franklin D. Roosevelt was an enthusiastic drinker, especially of his famed martinis. (thrillist.com)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
In the days before air conditioning, most folks had to rely upon whatever cooling breezes they could channel into their homes, and apparently in Tudor City they could find some relief from the East River, at least when the wind was blowing from that direction…
…if the wind wasn’t in your favor, you could switch on an electric fan, an appliance that didn’t come into common use until the 1920s…this ad also demonstrated the power of the dictum “sex sells,” even if applied subtly…
…it would be awhile before air-conditioning became common, but in 1932 you could at least keep your goodies cool with a GE refrigerator, its radiating coils offering a novel way to disperse this smoker’s emissions…
…we jump to our cartoons, with Kemp Starrett in some mixed company…
…Garrett Price illustrated the peril one faced when driving through Chelsea, where one could encounter freight trains at street level…
…for almost one hundred years this street-level freight line on 11th Avenue — known as “Death Avenue” — claimed the lives and limbs of hundreds of (mostly poor) New Yorkers…
HEADS UP!…the Hudson River Railroad at 11th Avenue and West 41st Street. (forgotten-ny.com)
…happily, we move on to June 25, 1932…
June 25, 1932 cover by Adolph K. Kronengold.
…which featured a profile of Samuel Klein (1886-1942), founder of Union Square’s discount department store S. Klein, famous for its “bargain bins.” The profile included this column-busting caricature of Klein as rendered by Abe Birnbaum…
YOU COULDN’T MISS IT…The S. Klein Department Store was a Union Square fixture from 1910 to its closing in 1975. At right, undated photo of founder Samuel Klein. The building is long gone, the Zeckendorf Towers now occupying the site. (theclio.com/bklyn.newspapers.com)
…and we roll right into our advertisements, and this spot from the makers of B.V.D.s, who found a new market for men’s shorts and continued the 1920s trend toward a more casual, androgynous look among “modern debs”…
…you likely wouldn’t catch Helena Rubinstein wearing B.V.D.s., busy here shaming women into using her line of beauty products…
…on to our cartoons, we have this spot illustration by James Thurber…
…and another travelogue image from Rea Irvin…
…Douglas Ryan gave us an unlikely Shakespeare lover (unless the boxer was Gene Tunney)…
…and we end with a bit of Prohibition humor from Gardner Rea…
With the explosion of car ownership in the 1920s and 30s came improved highways across America, but if one were to undertake a long-distance journey, like the New Yorker’s Morris Markey, you were bound to find a wide range of conditions, from concrete highways to muddy dirt roads.
July 25, 1931 cover by Gardner Rea.
Markey wrote about his experience of driving from New York City to Atlanta for his “Reporter at Large” column, noting that stops at filling stations also offered opportunities to fill up on bootleg gin. Drunk driving, it seems, wasn’t a big concern in the early 1930s.
BLUE HIGHWAYS…Although the U.S. launched into major roadbuilding projects in the 1920s and 30s, rutted and muddy roads were still common in many areas of the country. Clockwise, from top left, Route 1 winds through Maryland in the 1920s; marker indicating the Mason and Dixon Line dividing Pennsylvania from Maryland, circa 1930; a 1930s dirt road in the Eastern U.S.; a policeman directs traffic in Richmond, Va., in the 1930s. (Library of Congress/fhwa.dot.gov/theshockoeexaminer.blogspot.com)TIME TO GIN UP…James H. Brown (left), at the first of his four service stations in Richmond, Va., circa 1930. Some service stations offered Morris Markey bootleg gin during his journey to Atlanta. My use of this photo, however, does not imply that Mr. Brown offered the same service. (vintagerva.blogspot.com)
Unfortunately, Markey shared the sensibilities of many of his fellow Americans 89 years ago, and made this observation about drivers below the Mason and Dixon Line:
* * *
Pale Riders
Since the mid-19th century Chelsea’s Tenth Avenue was known as “Death Avenue” due to the killing and maiming of hundreds who got in the way of freight trains that plowed through 10th and 11th Avenues in the service of warehouses and factories in the district. In the 1850s the freight line hired horsemen known as “West Side Cowboys” to warn wagons and pedestrians of oncoming trains, but even with this precaution nearly 450 people were killed by trains between 1852 and 1908, with almost 200 deaths occurring in the decade preceding 1908. Calls for an elevated railroad were finally answered with the opening of the High Line in 1934. “The Talk of the Town” looked in on the last of these urban cowboys:
WESTSIDE COWBOYS…Clockwise, from top left, a steam locomotive rumbles down 11th Avenue in the 1920s; a West Side Cowboy William Connolly rides ahead of a train to warn pedestrians in 1932; George Hayde led the final ride of the West Side cowboys up 10th Avenue on March 24, 1941; aerial view of the High Line from 18th Street heading north. Opened in 1934, the High Line lifted most train traffic 30 feet above the street. Today it serves only pedestrians, and is one of New York’s biggest tourist draws. (Forgotten NY/AP/NY Times/thehighline.org)
* * *
Guys and Dolls
“The Talk of the Town” had some fun with a little-known aspect of a notorious gangster’s life; namely, the doll-filled house belonging to Jack “Legs” Diamond:
DOLL HOUSE…This house on Route 23 near Cairo, New York, once sheltered gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond, his wife, Alice, and her extensive collection of dolls and other knick-knacks. (nydailynews.com/Zillow)
“Talk” also made joking reference to the number of times Diamond had been shot and survived to tell about it.
Diamond’s luck would run out at the end of 1931 — Dec. 18, to be exact — when gunmen would break into his hotel room in Troy, NY, and put three bullets into his head.
* * *
Ziggy’s Stardust
Florenz Ziegfeld (1867-1932) had a knack for show business, launching the careers of many entertainers through his Ziegfeld Follies, which got its start in 1907 during vaudeville’s heyday. The advent of sound movies signaled the end of the vaudeville era and of Ziegfeld himself, who would stage one final Follies before his death in 1932. Gilbert Seldes penned a two-part profile of Ziegfeld under the title “Glorifier” (caricature by the great Abe Birnbaum). An excerpt:
GO WITH THE FLO…Broadway impresario Florenz “Flo” Ziegfeld Jr with his Follies cast, 1931. It would prove to be his last Follies show. Revivals following his death in 1932 would prove to be much less successful. (Wall Street Journal)
* * *
If Looks Could Kill
The New Yorker’s film critic John Mosher had a difficult time making sense of Murder by the Clock and its lead actress, Lilyan Tashman, who gave a tongue-in-cheek performance as the film’s femme fatale.
ARE YOU NUTS?…Irving Pichel and Lilyan Tashman in Murder by the Clock (1931). Tashman was known for her tongue-in-cheek portrayals of villainesses in films she made before her untimely death in 1934. (IMDB)
* * *
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Open-air performances of classical music and opera were popular summertime diversions in the days before air-conditioning. In 1931 crowds gathered in Lewisohn Stadium to hear the New York Philharmonic perform under the direction of Willem van Hoogstraten, who conducted the Lewisohn summer concert series from 1922 to 1939. Here is a listing in the New Yorker’s “Goings On About Town” section:
MUSIC IN THE AIR…Cover of the 1931 program for concerts at Lewisohn Stadium, College of the City of New York. Bottom right, signed photo of Willem van Hoogstraten from 1930. (digitalcollections.nypl.org/ebay.com)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
Flo Ziegfeld’s 1931 Follies were lavish productions, but his advertising in the New Yorker was anything but as evidenced in this tiny ad that appeared at the bottom of page 52…
…no doubt anticipating the demise of Prohibition, the makers of Anheuser-Busch beverages ramped up the promotion of their non-alcoholic products to create associations with pre-Prohibition times…
…not to be outdone by the East Coast chocolates giant Schrafft’s, Whitman’s took out this full page ad to suggest how you might enjoy their product…
…which was in sharp contrast to the approach Schrafft’s took in this full-page ad featured in the April 25, 1931 New Yorker, which touted the health benefits of its candy…
…on to our cartoons, Richard Decker took us swimming with a middle-aged man who was anything but bored…
…Barbara Shermund went en plein air with a couple of her ditzy debs…
…Garrett Price also went to the country to find a bit of humor…
…Helen Hokinson found a home away from home for a couple looking to take the sea air…
…James Thurber continued to explore his brewing war between the sexes…
…Harry Haenigsen gave us a novel approach to landing a trophy fish…
…William Steig illustrated the wonders of the tailoring profession…
…and Alan Dunn aptly summed up the generation gap of the 1930s…
…on to the Aug. 1, 1931 issue…
August 1, 1931 cover by Rose Silver.
…”The Talk of the Town” mused about the advertising jingles made famous by the makers of Sapolio soap…
…Bret Harte actually did write jingles for the brand, once described by Time magazine as “probably the world’s best-advertised product” in its heyday. With a huge market share, Sapolio was so well known in the early 20th century that its owners decided they no longer needed to spend money on advertising. It was a poor decision, and by 1940 the product disappeared from the marketplace.
SEEING THE LIGHT OF DAY…A 19th century Sapolio sign on Broadway and Morris Street revealed after an adjoining building was demolished in 1930. (MCNY)MONEY WELL SPENT…Sapolio ad from its heyday in the early 20th century. (Pinterest)
* * *
Tough Love
As a charter member of the famed Algonquin Round Table, Heywood Broun was a friend to many of the founding writers and editors of the New Yorker. And so it must have been quite a task to review his play, Shoot the Works, which the New Yorker found wanting in a number of aspects. And because he was so close to Broun himself, Robert Benchley left the review writing to someone who signed the column “S. Finny.” I can’t find any record of an S. Finny at the New Yorker, and I don’t believe this is a Benchley pseudonym (he used “Guy Fawkes” in the New Yorker). At any rate, here is an excerpt:
SHOOT GETS SHOT…The New Yorker wasn’t crazy about Heywood Broun’s play, which ran for 87 performances at George M. Cohan’s Theatre. (Playbill)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
The makers of the “Flexo” ice cube tray continued to tout the wonders of their product with these Ripley-themed ads. This might appear rather mundane to modern eyes, but electric refrigerators with built-in freezers were still rather novel in 1931…
…another way to stay cool in the summer of 1931 was to take an excursion to the Northern climes…
…this ad for the New York American featured an illustration by Herbert Roese, whose early work strongly resembled that of Peter Arno’s…
…on to our cartoons, we have the latest antics of the Little King courtesy Otto Soglow…
…William Steig added levity to a heavy moment…
…Barbara Shermund found humor at an antiques shop…
...John Held Jr continued his revels into our “naughty” Victorian past…
…and we end with Garrett Price, and a look at the ways of the modern family…
For nearly 100 years, giant steam locomotives (and later diesels) rumbled through the streets of Manhattan’s West Side, serving warehouses and industries via a route known as “Death Avenue.”
Jan. 18, 1930 cover by Constantin Alajalov (who apparently had just visited St. Moritz, home of the 1928 Winter Olympics).
Beginning in 1846, freight trains began operating at street level along 10th, 11th and 12th avenues. When mixed with an ever-growing crush of pedestrians, wagons, cars and trucks — hundreds were killed or mutilated, many of them schoolchildren. One of these streets, 10th Avenue, earned the moniker “Death Avenue” for its large share of fatalities. Although protests over the unsafe rail lines had been going on for decades, it wasn’t until 1929 that an agreement was reached to build an elevated rail system (which is now the popular High Line elevated park). In late December 1929 Mayor Jimmy Walker pried out the first spike at 11th Avenue and 60th Street. In “Notes and Comment,” E.B. White wryly observed:
GOOD OLD DAYS…Freight trains were introduced to the west side warehouse district in 1846. Block-long trains would run through cross streets and congested traffic, maiming and killing along the way (image at left circa 1920). At some point in the late 19th century trains were required to send a man ahead on horseback waving a red warning flag (see images at right, circa 1900); nevertheless, in the decade 1890-1900 nearly 200 deaths were recorded, mostly schoolchildren from nearby tenements. please click image to enlarge.WESTSIDE COWBOYs…Clockwise, from top left, a steam locomotive rumbles down 11th Avenue near 41st Street in the 1920s; men on horseback, known as the West Side Cowboys, rode ahead of the trains to warn pedestrians. Image at top right is of cowboy William Connolly on 11th Avenue in 1932; the last ride — George Hayde led the final ride of the West Side cowboys up 10th Avenue on March 24, 1941; aerial view of the High Line from 18th Street heading north. Opened in 1934, the elevated track lifted most freight train traffic 30 feet in the air. Today the High Line serves as a mile-and-a-half-long elevated park, and is one of New York’s biggest tourist draws. (Forgotten NY/AP/NY Times/thehighline.org)
A New Yorker illustrator/cartoonist who spent a lot of time hanging around the working class neighborhoods on the West Side was Reginald Marsh. One of the first cartoonists employed by the New Yorker, Marsh was also a “Social Realist” painter who had studied with the Art Students League. The prevailing theme at the League was life among the working poor, the unemployed, and the homeless, especially after the market crash of 1929. For the Jan. 18 issue Marsh contributed this cartoon featuring a Death Avenue subject…
…more than two years earlier (the Nov. 5, 1927 issue) Marsh provided this illustration of life on Death Avenue…
* * *
Birds of a Feather
And speaking of the down and out, E.B. White commented on the thousands of panicked citizens who had flocked to the New York Life Insurance Company in search of some peace of mind under the wing of its leader Darwin P. Kingsley (1857-1932). Kingsley steered the company through the market crash relatively unscathed, thanks to its investments in government bonds and real estate, and not in common stocks.
DARWIN’S LAW…Darwin P. Kingsley saw the New York Life Insurance Company through the stock market crash. The company’s assets weathered the crash thanks to investments in government bonds and real estate, and not common stocks. At right, the New York Life Building at 51 Madison Avenue, designed by architect Cass Gilbert and opened in December 1928.(retropundit.wordpress.com)
* * *
Oh Dear Me
As I’ve noted before, the New Yorker loved taking swipes at the New York Times, especially when the somewhat puritanical “Old Gray Lady” found it challenging to cover the more salacious side of life. In this case, according to E.B. White, it was the subject matter of a 1930 Broadway play Waterloo Bridge…
LES BELLES IMPURES…Actress June Walker (pictured here circa 1920) portrayed chorus girl Myra Deauville in the 1930 Broadway play Waterloo Bridge. In the play Myra finds herself out of work and stuck in London during World War I. She resorts to, um, prostitution to support herself. (IBDB)
* * *
Nerd Alert
White also got a kick from reading accounts (presumably in the Times) about Albert Einstein’s “lecture” at the American Museum of Natural History. According to the New York Times’Michael Pollak (F.Y.I., Aug. 10, 2012), “an unruly crowd of 4,500 stampeded through the (museum) to see a movie about Einstein’s work…it became known — relatively speaking — as the Einstein riot.”
JUST CHILLIN’…Albert Einstein circa 1930. The scientist was safely elsewhere when a science-crazed mob stormed the doors of the American Museum of Natural History, which was screening a film on the theory of relativity. (AP)
* * *
Not Ready For My Closeup
The actress Gloria Swanson (1899-1983) was a major star during the silent era who saw her career wane with the advent of the talkies, and then suddenly soar again with her unforgettable portrayal of reclusive silent film star Norma Desmond in the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. In her profile of the actress, Helena Huntington Smith seemed to suggest that Swanson was something of an ugly duckling who managed to transcend her looks through a process of graceful maturation (Abe Birnbaum’s caricature notwithstanding). Some excerpts:
GLORIOUS FACES…Abe Birnbaum no doubt drew from images like these for his caricature of Gloria Swanson. From left, Swanson in a cloche hat in an undated photo; publicity photo for her 1928 film Sadie Thompson; publicity photo for 1929’s The Trespasser, Swanson’s first all-talking picture. (Pinterest/pixels.com)
* * *
Good-Bye and Good Luck
Not too many 33 year olds write autobiographies, but then again Robert Graves was no typical 33-year-old. Good-Bye to All That, which Graves later described as “my bitter leave-taking of England,” was reviewed in the Jan. 18 “Recent Books” column. Note in the first paragraph how the reviewer (A.W.S.) suggested that writing about World War I (which ended less than 12 years earlier) was getting better “as the shock of the actual catastrophe wears off.” This is not unlike the writings (and films) about Viet Nam that began to emerge in the 1980s and 90s. An excerpt:
A LOT ON HIS MIND…from left, Robert Graves served in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in World War I (photo is probably from 1915); first edition of his autobiography Good-Bye to All That, which he published at age 33; Graves in 1935. (Oxford U/Wikipedia/fundaciorobertgraves.org)
* * *
From Our Advertisers
We begin with this elegant ad for a new art deco beauty salon at the Abraham & Straus department store on Fulton Street in Brooklyn…
…for reference, a photo of salon, from 1930…
…the Jan. 18 issue contained a slew of ads enticing New Yorkers to flee the winter and head south — smartly attired, of course — like the couple in the upper right hand corner who look fashionably disinterested as they head out for some “playtime” in Havana (love the man’s combo black tie and bucket hat)…
…and you have to hand it to the folks at Sterling, who put the chic into high-powered boat engines…
…this has to be one of the very few times, perhaps the only time, that a toilet seat was advertised in the New Yorker…note how the folks at the Church company played on consumers’ social anxieties, proffering the suggestion that an old toilet seat might be the one thing that lingers in the memories of your houseguests…
…of course a lot of people eased their anxieties by lighting up, something they didn’t have to worry about because they were told it was actually good for their health (the manufacturers of Old Golds, for example, claimed their cigarettes created a “smoke screen” that kept away colds and other “throat dangers”). Not to be left behind, the makers of Lucky Strikes claimed their “toasting” process removed “dangerous irritants”…
…speaking of Old Golds, cartoonist John Held Jr. picked up some extra pocket change with this “woodcut” illustration for the brand…
…as for Held’s fellow New Yorker cartoonists, we have some more social anxiety courtesy of Alan Dunn…
…a bit of chit chat among society ladies…Barbara Shermund looked in on a pair down in Palm Springs…
…while Helen Hokinson found her ladies contemplating new economic realities…
…and finally we have Peter Arno, and a punch line that failed to land…
Before the elevated tracks were constructed in the early 1930s in Manhattan’s west side warehouse district (home of today’s popular “High Line”), freight trains rumbled through the city–at street level–on “Death Avenue.”
November 5, 1927 cover by Constantin Alajalov.
Freight trains were introduced to the west side warehouse district in 1846, which was a bad plan from the very start. Block-long trains would run through cross streets and congested traffic, maiming and killing along the way.
ON YOUR LEFT!…Both diesel and steam locomotives rumbled along Manhattan avenues well into the 20th century. Pictured is a freight train at 11th and 41st Street. Eleventh was known as “Death Avenue.” (Forgotten NY)
According to Friends of the High Line, “an 1892 New York World article referred to the trains as ‘a monster which has menaced them night and day,’ and by 1908 the Bureau of Municipal Research claimed that since 1852, the trains had killed 436 people. A New York Times piece from the same year reported that in the preceding decade there had been almost 200 deaths, mostly of children.”
MIXED USE…This circa 1920 photo shows the congestion that occurred when freight trains, horse-drawn carts, cars, and pedestrians used the same streets. (Kalmbach Publishing Company)SHOWDOWN…Beginning in 1850, the West Side Cowboys rode ahead of oncoming trains to ensure the safety of people on the street, although statistics show that some did not heed the warnings. (Friends of the High Line)
The safety issues on Death Avenue were finally addressed in 1929 when city and state officials reached an agreement with New York Central Railroad to move the rail above street level. New elevated tracks opened in 1934 were novel in the way they bisected city blocks, unloading cargo directly into buildings in the district.
THIS WORKED BETTER…The elevated tracks served warehouses including one for the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco), pictured above, which today houses another popular High Line attraction, the Chelsea Market. (Friends of the High Line)A New York Central Railroad advertisement touting the benefits of its elevated West Side Line, which today supports a unique and popular urban park–the High Line. (Friends of the High Line)
The elevated West Side Line’s unique design also complements the current use of the tracks–the High Line, one of New York’s most popular tourist draws and a widely successful example of urban reuse and renewal. Today few visitors to the High Line are aware that the peaceful oasis they now enjoy was once a dangerous and chaotic place that was home to the aptly named Death Avenue…
NOT SO BAD, THIS…Visitors to the High Line enjoy a peaceful oasis above the former “Death Avenue.” (Friends of the High Line)
What prompted my interest in Death Avenue was this illustration by Reginald Marsh in the Nov. 5, 1927 issue of the New Yorker:
Marsh (1898-1954) joined the New Yorker as one of its first cartoonists, and stayed there for seven years. He was practically born an artist, growing up in an artists’ colony in New Jersey where his father worked as a noted muralist and his mother made watercolors. After graduating from Yale he went to work of the Daily News, where he contributed sketches of vaudeville acts and illustrated a column titled “People We’d Like to Kill but Don’t.”
Described as a “Social Realist” painter, Marsh studied painting at the Art Students League, where the prevailing theme was life among the working poor, the unemployed, and the homeless, especially after the market crash in 1929…
WHY NOT USE THE “L”?…the title of a 1930 work by Reginald Marsh. (Whitney Museum of Art)SELF REFLECTION…Reginald Marsh with one of his self-portrait paintings, circa 1938. (Museum of the City of New York)
* * *
Write What You Know
Among other items in the Nov. 5, 1927 issue was this profile written by Charles Shaw of fellow New Yorker contributor (artist and writer) Ralph Barton. An excerpt, with sketch by Peter Arno…
By Any Other Name
As it still does today, the New Yorker listed area happenings in the front section of the magazine, and in the early days the magazine included extensive listings of sporting events. The excerpt below offers various diversions from a “hunt race” to “squash tennis.” There were also professional football games featuring such mighty foes as the New York Giants and the Duluth Eskimos…
Hope(ful) Chest
Before the age of smart phones, the term “smart” in advertising meant one was on the leading edge of fashion–for aspiring young women this meant all things French–clothes, perfumes, beauty treatments–and for the bride, the all-important trousseaux, or so claimed this advertisement from Franklin Simon & Co. on page five of the Nov. 5 issue…
Couldn’t afford the latest from Paris? In that case you could turn to the back pages of the same issue, where you would find cheaper ads from places like Kathleen, Inc, which sold knock-offs of the latest in haute couture…
* * *
And finally, we return to Reginald Marsh, who contributed this cartoon to the Nov. 5 issue…
A New Yorker State of Mind 