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Top Hat’s Renascence
After falling out of favor as a fashion style, top hats began to make a comeback among men in 1924. As a May 1924 New York Times Magazine article (with no byline) wrote:
The high silk hat — or, as it is commony called, the stovepipe or chimney pot — has been seen in the last decade only rarely, at the opera or at public functions, worn by dignitaries of the occasion.
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The top hat, that crown of masculine dignity which of late years has succeeded in making its wearer feel rather foolish instead of dignified, finds popular favor once more this spring. At least so say the mysterious beings who determine fashions for men.
It didn’t last forever. Picture all the Great Depression-era photos of men waiting in bread lines during the 1930s; they’re all wearing hats, but none of them wear top hats. In 1961, John F. Kennedy became the last man to wear a top hat at his presidential inauguration.
In recent years, the top hat has mostly lived on as an “ironic” countercultural statement, worn occasionally by entertainers including Tom Petty, Shania Twain, and Madonna.
I was also intrigued by the 1924 headline ‘Top Hat’s Renascence’ with the final word spelled that way. Had it always been spelled that way?
According to Google Books Ngram Viewer, the spelling ‘renascence’ was most popular from the 1880s through the 1920s. Particularly since the 1980s, its usage has plummeted to near-zero levels today:
Source:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=RENASCENCE&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=2Still, the spelling ‘renascence’ has never come close to matching ‘renaissance’ in book usage. In 1924 specifically, ‘renaissance’ was still used a whopping 222 times more than ‘renascence.’
Source:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=RENASCENCE%2Crenaissance&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=0
Top Hat’s Renascence
Published: Sunday, May 11, 1924
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The Descent of Lamp-Lighting
In 1924, New York Times Magazine profiled the precipitous decline of a once-common NYC profession: the lamp-lighter.
The journalist Bertram Reinitz briefly explained the history:
The first electric street lamps were employed in New York City in 1880… In 1904 the unified control of current was introduced, making it possible to regulate the lighting from the sub-station.
This technological development changed the occupation tremendously:
No great measure of skill is required to press a button and turn on a light. The oil lamps required constant, almost loving, care. There was a deft twist necessary to the insertion of the lighting stick into the gas lamp’s aperture, followed by the pulling down of a hook and the application of the flame. Mastery of that deft twist enabled a man to support a family — large families were quite common among lamplighters — and even to send his oldest boy to high school. Now the boy can do the lighting and not miss his schooling.
In 2024, is there anybody in America who still works as a lamp-lighter professionally? At least full-time?
According to the history and culture website Clio, NYC still has two gaslight streetlamps standing, both of which were designated as official landmarks in 1997.
The Descent of Lamp-Lighting
Published: Sunday, May 4, 1924
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The Irishing of Ireland
In 1924, three years after Ireland won independence in 1921, New York Times Magazine reported on how many traces of old Britishness were disappearing from the new nation.
The Irish War of Independence took place from 1919 to 1921, ending when the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in December 1921. While Ireland technically still remained part of the British Empire, they gained “dominion” status, effectively providing for home rule when it came to domestic affairs. Australia had previously gained this status in 1901, followed by New Zealand in 1907, plus South Africa in 1910.
The journalist William George Fitz-Gerald, writing under the pen name Ignatius Phayre, described the changing Ireland in 1924:
The street letter boxes of Dublin are no longer a lurid British scarlet. They are now painted a dark green, and the very warning notices on a fresh and smeary coat are in the Gaelic characters. The streets of Ireland’s metropolis are now renamed bilingually.
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A truly Irish Ireland, the new government feels, can only be achieved by restoring a purely Gaelic civilization, alike on the cultural and material sides. Thus the new Irish trademark is an invitation to all to “support home industries,” even where stuffs and goods cost a good deal more than the imported article.
Britain wouldn’t officially relinquish its powers over Ireland until 1949.
As for Fitz-Gerald (a.k.a Phayre), his journalistic legacy today is largely remembered for burnishing Hitler’s reputation to American audiences in a series of 1930s articles.
The Irishing of Ireland
Published: Sunday, April 27, 1924
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The Cinderella of Politics
In 1924, the vice presidency was vacant. Former VP Calvin Coolidge had ascended to the presidency, but not yet nominated his own subordinate. New York Times Magazine analyzed who both parties could select as their running mates that summer.
First, Richard Barry’s article noted the increasing potential importance of the role:
The average age at death of the first ten presidents — Washington to Tyler — was 78 years, while the average age of death of the last ten presidents — Grant to Harding, exclusive of Taft who is still living — was only 62 years.
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This while the life-span [sic] of the average citizen, due to bettered personal hygiene, improved public sanitation, and the change in the cultural attitude toward old age, has increased.
What about today? In 2024, the average age at death of the 10 most recent presidents (Nixon to Biden) is much older than 62 or 78. Ford, Reagan, and H.W. Bush all lived to their 90s. Carter has now lived to 99 at minimum. Biden has similarly lived to 81 at minimum.
At the same time, none of the 10 most recent presidents died in office. The 1924-era presidential lifespan seemed so low in part because not one but two of the 10 most recent presidents at that point were assassinated: both Garfield and McKinley.
Barry then predicted that the Republicans would select their 1924 vice presidential nominees with far greater consideration than the party had previously, in 1920:
Harding was not chosen until late in the afternoon of Saturday at the end of a very hot week. The delegates were eager to get home. Most of them had tickets in their pockets to leave for home that night or the next day. No one wanted to wait over until Monday. So they gave half an hour to the selection, as it proved, not only of the next vice president, but of the next [president[.
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This time it will be a thirty-day rather than a thirty-minute choice.
Perhaps it didn’t quite take 30 days, but it did take longer than expected.
The Republicans re-nominated Coolidge as their presidential nominee with essentially no opposition. On the first vice presidential ballot, former Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden led with 20% in a multi-candidate field. Lowden, who actually led for the 1920 Republican presidential nomination four years earlier but eventually lost to Harding, further solidified his lead on the second and third ballots. He claimed an outright majority on the third.
But he actually declined the honor, sticking to his pre-convention statement that he would decline the vice presidency if offered. (Which makes it odd that the Republicans would have nominated him anyway?)
Back then, “the party” selected the vice presidential candidate. It wasn’t the presidential candidate’s choice, as occurs today. After Lowden declined the VP slot, though, Coolidge tried to influence his party to select Idaho Sen. William E. Borah. The party wasn’t swayed, instead selecting Charles G. Dawes, director of the Bureau of the Budget. (Today known as the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB.)
As for the Democrats, Barry predicted, they would do the exact opposite and select their running mate quickly because of how long their presidential nomination was expected to take:
But the Democrats, by all present outward signs, will go the proverbial gamblers’ pace for the vice presidency this year. They will so exhaust themselves in the choice of a presidential candidate that when the second man comes to be chosen there will be nothing to do but draw straws or shuffle the cards.
Barry proved right.
Democrats took 103 ballots to nominate their presidential candidate, a record that stands to this day. For context, the last time a major-party convention even went to a second ballot was the Democrats in 1952. (More details in last week’s SundayMagazine.org post here.)
Not wanting to replicate that 103-ballot process, 1924’s Democrats would quickly nominate Nebraska Gov. Charles W. Bryan for vice president.
The Cinderella of Politics
Published: Sunday, April 20, 1924
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Bosses of National Conventions
A 1924 New York Times Magazine preview of that summer’s upcoming Democratic National Convention called the bid of John W. Davis “his impossible plea for nomination.” He ended up getting the nod.
Davis was a former U.S. House member from West Virginia, Solicitor General (the federal government’s main lawyer who argues before the Supreme Court), and Ambassador to Great Britain. By 1924, he no longer actually served in government, instead working as at attorney in private practice.
As the journalist Charles Willis Thompson wrote for NYT Mag that year:
“In the Democratic Convention the bosses will present Senator Ralston of Indiana, and William G. McAdoo will presumably make his hopeless fight for vindication, while Governor Smith will bedevil the situation with his impossible plea for nomination, and Senator Underwood will reap the ungrateful fruits of his thoughtful and well-considered campaign.”
However, Thompson allowed for the possibility that a dark horse candidate could claim the nomination instead:
“At this distance it looks like Coolidge on the first ballot for the Republicans, and a long climb up the ladder for the Democrats, as in 1912 and 1920, with some one [sic] emerging at the top who wasn’t visible when the climb started.”
Indeed, the Democrats took 103 ballots to select their candidate, to this day the most of all time. In fact, the last time a major-party convention even went to a second ballot was the Democrats in 1952.
Davis only finished in seventh place during the initial ballot, behind:
- Former Treasury Secretary (and future California Sen.) William G. McAdoo
- New York Gov. (and future 1928 nominee) Al Smith
- Former Ohio Gov. (and prior 1920 nominee) James M. Cox
- Mississippi Sen. Pat Harrison
- Alabama Sen. Oscar Underwood
- New Jersey Gov. George S. Silzer
(The aforementioned Indiana Sen. Samuel M. Ralston, who Thompson mentioned as one of the top contenders, originally finished eighth.)
Thompson also correctly predicted that incumbent President Calvin Coolidge would win the Republican nomination on the first ballot.
Perhaps the Democrats should have nominated one of their other top contenders instead, since Coolidge ended up defeating Smith in a rout: 72% to 26% of the Electoral College, plus 54% to 29% of the popular vote.
(The Progressive Party candidate, former Wisconsin Gov. Robert M. La Follette, earned 17% of the popular vote and won his home state of Wisconsin.)
In his later life, Davis would come to disagree with many of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies and actually end up supporting the Republican presidential nominees in 1936, 1940, and 1944.
Bosses of National Conventions
Published: Sunday, April 13, 1924
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Charter of Liberties Finds a Home
In 1924, the Declaration of Independence began public display in a new so-called “permanent shrine” at the Library of Congress. That “permanent shrine” lasted until 1952.
Since the country’s founding, the physical Declaration itself was long controlled by the State Department, which moved it around through the years, primarily to various buildings within Washington, D.C. Through the decades, it was displayed at the State Department’s headquarters, the Library of Congress, and the Patent Office. (Even though it’s not a patent?)
Occasionally, the Declaration was displayed in a different city entirely, such as Philadelphia during the country’s 1876 Centennial celebrations.
For three decades from 1894 to 1924, though, the Declaration was displayed in a cabinet at the State Department’s library — in other words, virtually hidden from public view.
On February 28, 1924, the Declaration were officially moved to a supposedly “permanent” public display at the Library of Congress. President Calvin Coolidge, First Lady Grace Coolidge, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, and Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam all attended the ceremony:
President Coolidge and others at the 1924 ceremony. Image: public domain. Source: National Photo Company Collection (Library of Congress). https://www.loc.gov/item/2010649507/ The National Archives website describes a scene almost impossible to imagine with a sitting president today:
“Not a word was spoken during a moving ceremony in which Putnam fitted the Declaration into its frame. There were no speeches. Two stanzas of America were sung.”
Coolidge earned his nickname “Silent Cal” indeed.
Not long after Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941, the Declaration was moved to Fort Knox, the heavily fortified compound where the U.S. maintains most of its official gold reserves.
The document was returned to the Library of Congress in 1944. (Not in 1945 or 1946, after World War II was over, but while the conflict remained ongoing? Seems a little premature.)
Still, the National Archives building was far newer, having opened in 1935 compared to the far more ancient Library of Congress. Accordingly, the National Archives had more advanced protections against threats including bombs and fire, plus better temperature controls to preserve the document in perpetuity.
So in 1952, custody of the Declaration was transferred to the National Archives, where it has remained on public display ever since. The transfer ceremony looked quite elaborate:
Source: National Archives / NAID: 74228153
Charter of Liberties Finds a Home
Published: Sunday, April 6, 1924
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Science Man’s Destroyer
A 1924 New York Times Magazine article warned that nuclear weapons may soon be invented.
Journalist Eugene S. Bagger noted the rapidly increasing pace of recent technological innovation, sometimes to fatal effect:
Thirty years ago flying by heavier-than-air machines was still regarded as an impossibility. Twenty years ago it was an accomplished fact. Six years ago German airplanes dropped on England explosives at the rate of twelve tons a month. Today it would be perfectly easy for French airplanes to drop on England explosives at the rate of two hundred tons per day.
Which type of weapon could be invented next?
We have heard repeatedly of the disastrous consequences that may follow upon the release of atomic energy, which today is regarded as a possibility of a future none too remote.
The first would be dropped on Japan 21 years later.
Science Man’s Destroyer
Published: Sunday, March 30, 1924
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Cathedral Overlooking Washington
When former President Woodrow Wilson died in February 1924, he was buried at Washington National Cathedral. A contemporaneous New York Times Magazine article analyzed the building’s potential role as a “national sanctuary.”
Whether or not the cathedral at Washington will become a national sanctuary time will show. Most certainly, however, it will be a treasure spot of the capital. There will be much within its boundaries to draw the layman as well as the churchman. As an example of pure Gothic architecture alone, it will be without equal in the country, it is said.
Technically, the building wouldn’t be completed until 1990!
Why is there a “national cathedral” at all, despite the ostensible separation of church and state? Because it’s only unofficially a national cathedral. Officially, it’s called the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.
The 1924 article also explained this distinction:
Strictly speaking, America, or rather the United States, can have no national cathedral by virtue of the fact that we have no national religion. Westminster Abbey represents the Church of England, Notre Dame the Church of France. The same is true of all national cathedrals in all national capitals. That is the only reason and the best reason that for a century and more Washington stood as the only capital without the grace of this symbol of religious unity.
Still, when a major governmental figure of Christian faith dies, their funeral service is often held there. In recent years, that’s included former President George H.W. Bush, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and former Sen. John McCain.
Why is Wilson still the only president buried in D.C.? Arlington National Cemetery houses the remains of both Presidents John F. Kennedy and William Howard Taft, but while it’s located the “greater D.C. area,” it’s still technically in Virginia.
Cathedral Overlooking Washington
Published: Sunday, March 23, 1924
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The Statesman in the Vatican
Pope Francis is sometimes called a more “modern” pope. 100 years ago, a 1924 P.W. Wilson article in New York Times Magazine called Pope Pius XI the same:
He has invited baseball into the grounds of the Vatican; he has submitted himself to the motion camera; he has acquired an automobile.
It’s unclear to me exactly what Wilson meant when he wrote the pope “has submitted himself to the motion camera,” as though this was a new development? According to my research, Pope Leo XIII was the first pontiff ever filmed… back in 1896, a full 26 years prior.
Wilson also suggested that Pope Pius XI could change a major component of official Catholic Church doctrine:
As for difficulties over the virgin birth, the rejoinder of Rome is a rumor hitherto unconfirmed, that the Pope, using his infallible authority, may supplement the dogma of the immaculate conception, declared in 1854, by the further dogma that our Lord’s Mother is corporeally present in heaven, a dogma already believed by most Catholics.
Instead, it was his successor Pope Pius XII who declared the Assumption of Mary as official dogma in 1950.
In the current era, the “modern” actions of Pope Francis include joining Twitter/X where he has 18.6 million followers, plus Instagram where has 9.2 million. No papal TikTok account, at least not yet.
The Statesman in the Vatican
Published: Sunday, March 16, 1924
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The Radio Takes the Stump
A mere 4.7% of U.S. households owned a radio in 1924, yet that was still enough to constitute “the first radio election.” A 1924 New York Times Magazine article described the momentous change.
It will be no disgrace for the president to sit in the White House and talk confidentially to the radio, though millions listen in. The Democratic candidate will doubtless take the stump, but no night will be thought complete without a radio speech from him.
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It makes no difference whether they talk in a little hall without raising their voices or scream themselves hoarse in Madison Square Garden, they will have such audiences as they never had before.
Radio reached majority penetration beginning in 1931, so 1932 is arguably when the true “radio age” for presidential elections began. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous “Fireside Chats” began in March 1933. You can listen to the first one here.
What would be the equivalent new technology today? Probably TikTok.
By April 2019, the Chinese-owned app was was launching songs to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. By September 2020, President Donald Trump was threatening to block the app from the U.S. entirely. But politicians themselves weren’t really using TikTok in the 2020 election.
By 2024, though, they are. President Joe Biden joined TikTok in February, posting his first video on Super Bowl Sunday. Titled “lol hey guys,” it currently has 10.3 million views.
One wonders whether future historians will regard the “lol hey guys” video with the same reverence bestowed on FDR’s first Fireside Chat.
The Radio Takes the Stump
Published: Sunday, March 9, 1924
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