Election Day

No blog post today, except this one-word message for our American readers.

You know what to do, right?

Vote, published by the Milwaukee County League of Women Voters, early 20thc, Collection of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Fashions for November 1913

Dresses November 1913

Loretta reports:

Let's read over the shoulder of a lady in 1913 who's just picked up the latest copy of Ladies Home Journal.

  What I See on Fifth Avenue by Alice Long: With Drawings by Jessie Gillespie.

“From the top of one of those lumbering, top-heavy busses that wheeze ponderously along Fifth Avenue is really the best place to get a good view, not alone of the shops that line the avenue, but also of the kaleidoscopic mass of color formed by the hurrying streams of woman shoppers. And if you are looking for what is new in fashion you are just as apt to see it on some of these same shoppers, many of whom have names that are household words because of their prominence socially or because of the financial rating of their men folks, as in even the most exclusive shops...

“I SPENT several days going through the more important Fifth Avenue shops and dressmaking places, and of one thing I am convinced: The fashionable silhouette demands fullness at the hips and a narrowing in at the foot; and be it peplum or tunic—call it what you please—some sort of flounce arrangement must be shown on the skirt of a fussy dress anywhere between the waistline and the feet. A strikingly pretty model of this sort of composite type formed the dress of one of the season’s débutantes, and was intended for a luncheon to be given in her honor. It was of a dull watermelon pink shade of silk crepe, with a. blouse of pale lilac chiffon over flesh-colored malines.* The Medici frill is wired with fine silk wire, so fine as to be invisible, and the plaited tunic, which is of the lilac chiffon, is also wired on the edge, so that it stands out the tiniest little bit.—Ladies’ Home Journal, Volume 30, November 1913 

 The whole article is an interesting read: the color red's popularity, the puzzle of wearing summer weight fashion in November and heavy fabrics in summer, etc.

*Malines in this context appears to refer to "Malines Lace—Bobbin lace with sprigs or dots outlined with a heavier cordonnet over a hexagonal or round mesh ground.  It is made in one piece of white flax thread."—Dictionary of Textiles, Harmuth 1915. Aka Mechlin Lace. You can read a history of lace here.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption link will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Breakfast Links: Week of October 29, 2018

Breakfast Links are served! Our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Does discovery of a red velvet bag reinforce the legend that Sir Walter Raleigh's widow Elizabeth kept his severed head with her after his execution?
• R is for raisins, the unexpected super-food found in many early modern medicines.
• Norah Smyth, suffragette photographer.
• Image: Cat passages in the doors at Thomas Jefferson's 18thc Monticello.
• The 19thc angel guides of death.
• Stylish (and prize-winning) 1959 dress, made from a feedsack.
• President George Washington's letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, RI, 1790.
• Image: Dubious tips on how to get a husband from an 1950s women's magazine.
• "Knackers pork": the grim reality of London slaughterhouses during the Regency.
• Elizabeth Thorn, the angel of the Battle of Gettysburg.
• Wheat the old way: 1940s video of Pennsylvania Dutch family harvesting wheat by hand, without modern machinery.
• From an 1930s trousseau: beautifully embroidered silk slip and tap pants.
• Image: 1850s child's leather boot decorated with a black cat.
• A Mandarin duck mysteriously appears on a pond in New York's Central Park.
• John Rogers and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
• The Kit-Kat Club, an 18thc literary, political, and social club that became a stronghold of the Whig party.
• Workers in a Goodwill store in New Jersey discover an important, original 1774 Philadelphia "rebel" newspaper.
• Fifteen important women in history that you may not have heard of.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.
Please note: I'll be traveling this week, so alas, no Breakfast Links next Sunday....

Friday Video: The Two-Handkerchief Bra, 1921

Courtesy Library of Congress

Loretta reports:

In the early days of the brassiere, two handkerchiefs would do, apparently.  Here's how to turn them into an undergarment.

Illustration Where there's smoke there's fire, Russell Patterson, 1920s. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Rare Survivors in New York City: Sylvan Terrace's Cobblestones & Row Houses, c1880

Susan reporting,

When most of us think of Manhattan, we picture towering skyscrapers, sleek walls of glass and stone, midtown streets crowded with cabs, cars, and bustling pedestrians. Small 19thc wooden row houses and a quiet cobble street: not so much.

Yet the street shown here is indeed in Manhattan, in Washington Heights near 160th Street. I discovered it by accident, on my way to visit the 18thc Morris-Jumel Mansion (more about that in a later post.) No matter where you live, the scene may look familiar, because it has appeared as a location in numerous period films.

The street is called Sylvan Terrace. In the 1880s, the city's growth was creeping uptown, and the open fields and gardens that had so long insulated the Morris-Jumel Mansion were finally being divided into streets and house-plots. Developer James E. Ray commissioned twenty identical row houses, built on what had once been the Mansion's carriage drive. Because the neighborhood was so far uptown from what was considered the "city," the houses were exempt from fire codes that stipulated brick or stone construction, and could instead be made from less expensive wood over high brick basements.

The new street was given the pastoral name of Sylvan Terrace, another indication of how far it still was from downtown. The houses were modest, and the residents were middle-class, tradesmen and small merchants. The neighborhood continued to grow around them, larger and more lavish brownstone townhouses followed by larger-still apartment buildings. In a city where buildings are routinely knocked down within a generation to build something new,  all twenty of the little frame houses on Sylvan Terrace miraculously survived.

But time did bring changes. The original cobblestones were paved over with asphalt, and the houses themselves gradually lost most of their wood trim. Some were fronted with stucco facades, others sheathed in aluminum siding or false brick. The basic integrity of the street remained, however, and in 1970, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission created the Jumel Terrace Historic District.

In 1981, Federal funds restored the facades to approximate their original unified appearance; the backs of the houses still reflect 20thc remodeling. The asphalt paving was removed from the cobblestone street. Reaction to the restoration seems to have been mixed at the time. Residents complained that the work had been shoddy, and a few rebellious owners began repainting the new facades. In an 1989 article about the restoration, The New York Times deplored its "deadened homogeneity."

Visiting today, it appears that the disgruntlement of the 1980s has been forgotten, or at least put aside. The houses appear beautifully maintained, and unified in their color schemes - which I personally found more harmonious than homogeneous. Perhaps it's not so much a matter of taste, but economics, that has brought peace to Sylvan Terrace. The houses seldom come on the market, but when they do, their charm and history come at a price: $1,500,000 and up.

Above: Photograph by Susan Holloway Scott.
Lower right: Photograph via Curbed NY.