As the ravages of the First World War and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic receded into the past, a new spirit gripped New York City. Energy seemed to infuse every aspect of city life, from business to leisure and everything in between. For a decade, New Yorkers by and large lived, worked and partied with abandon.
The engine that ignited the city’s swinging style was its economic expansion. While the nation itself, over the course of the 1920s, boasted an increase in gross national product of some 40% and a doubling of its total wealth, New York claimed even more than its share.
The city was one of the largest manufacturing hubs, producing one twelfth of the country’s entire factory output. Its harbors received thousands of ships every year and its more than 200 shipping companies dispatched almost half of America’s international maritime trade. The result was a stunning increase in standard of living for those who were employed, which swept many into an affluent culture of consumerism.
Immigration, Migration and the Harlem Renaissance
By 1920, over a century of immigration had created the “melting pot” of nationalities for which New York has come to be known. But concerns about job competition and plain ethnic prejudice prompted the passage of two exclusionary laws. The Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 banned Asians entirely and established stringent quotas for certain other ethnic groups, particularly Southern and Eastern Europeans. Northern Europeans were still welcomed, however, and because a number of West Indian islands were British colonies, Jamaicans and other West Indians were able to come in droves to the city. Added to this group, that ultimately made up 25% of Harlem’s population, was the river of humanity that flowed into that growing neighborhood as a result of the Great Migration.
Labor shortages in the North sent recruiters to the South to find African American hires. Others came simply for the promise of a more equitable life. The resulting mix blossomed into the Harlem Renaissance.
Writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, actor/singer Paul Robeson, activist Marcus Garvey, and visual artist Aaron Douglas all made their mark. But more than anything else, jazz emanating from Harlem was the hallmark of the age. Musicians like bandleader Fletcher Henderson, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington, pianist Jelly Roll Morton and singer/trumpeter Louis Armstrong made jazz the sound of the city.
Whether recordings, radio broadcasts or live performances at venues such as the Savoy and the Cotton Club, New Yorkers — white and black — couldn’t get enough. Nor could they sit sedately by and just listen: dance floors and living rooms shook with the vibes of the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom and the flea hop.
Other “Jazz Age” Entertainments
One of the very first radio broadcast in the country — over Pittsburgh’s KDKA — took place in 1920. Three years later there were more than 500 radio stations, including in New York. By the end of the decade, radios and radio programming in the city — music, dramas, presidential addresses — had become commonplace. And the place to buy your radio was Radio Row, a warehouse district centered around Cortlandt Street on the lower west side of Manhattan.
New Yorkers also loved the movies. This passion was reinforced in 1927 by the introduction of the first “talkie,” The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson, in the Warner Theater in Times Square.
Movie-going soon became a once-a-week indulgence for many (at 20¢ a ticket), lured by such stars as Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Tallulah Bankhead.
For New York City, the ‘20s saw a sea change in organized sports. Yankee Stadium opened in 1923 and the heroic performance of Babe Ruth drew record attendance throughout the decade. Professional boxing was legalized in 1920. This soon produced the likes of Jack Dempsey, who proceeded to fill Madison Square Garden with ardent fans, not just from the working class, but from all strata of society.
Prohibition
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol and, in accordance with the Volstead Act, at 12:00 am on January 17, 1920, every tavern, bar and saloon in the country was closed. The law did not, however, regulate the consumption of liquor. Many people made “moonshine” or “bathtub gin” for their own use or stockpiled a supply before the law took effect. In fact, the conventional wisdom suggested that New York’s Yale Club had a 14-year supply of booze in its basement.
Looking back, the statute seemed to spawn another law — the law of unintended consequences. By forcing the liquor trade underground, Prohibition (1920–1933) gave rise to “bootlegging” (the illegal manufacture and sale of alcohol) and its accompanying organized crime and gang violence, as personified by Chicago crime boss Al Capone and New York’s Dutch Schultz. It also was responsible for the proliferation of “speakeasies,” which, in a perverse way, just seemed to add to the spirit of high jinx and festivity that characterized the era.
“Flappers” or the Modern Woman
No image of the period is more iconic than the “flapper,” a young lady sporting short skirts, bobbed hair and flashy hair bands, who smoked, drank, danced somewhat provocatively and delighted in “unladylike” utterances. This was, perhaps, the outward manifestation of women’s newly won freedoms.
Electricity now being widespread, new technologies such as the washing machine, the freezer and the vacuum cleaner released women from much of the drudgery of housework. This is turn permitted them to enter the labor market and, with the independence conferred by a salary, allowed them to participate in the expansive consumer culture. Increased sexual freedom was also in the air.
The greater availability of birth control devices such as the diaphragm no doubt relieved some of the worry and strictures surrounding sex. And the automobile, called by some “a bedroom on wheels,” provided young New Yorkers with the freedom to travel where they wanted and to do what they pleased.
Last, but certainly not least, women got the vote. They had had it in New York State elections since 1917. But in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution empowered women to shape our federal government with the very same impact as men.
Not Everything Was Good
The 1920s in New York was an era of contradictions. While much of the population prospered at levels unseen before, many industrial workers suffered. Ironically, the Great (Black) Migration, encouraged by Northerners to correct a labor shortage, ended up creating a labor oversupply. This was exacerbated by the population redistribution from farms to cities like New York and the displacement of both skilled and unskilled jobs with machinery.
Unemployment hovered at 7%, fomenting job insecurity and little improvement in wages or working conditions.
The flu pandemic that had killed 30,000 New Yorkers was over. And the epidemic illnesses that had raged through the city before the universal supply of fresh water and the removal of trash and sewage were also gone.
But tuberculosis still haunted the city. Despite public health efforts and special clinics, in the absence of antibiotics, it still managed to kill almost 4,600 New Yorkers a year.
Cars were said to be the most important product of the 1920s. Low prices and generous credit conspired to put more than half a million new automobiles on the streets of the city — luxuries, perhaps, in 1920, but life necessities by 1929. Nevertheless, there was precious little new highway or road construction within the city. The result was a New York choked with traffic and mired in a transportation nightmare.
And then there was the stock market. According to Federal Reserve historians, “The Roaring Twenties roared loudest and longest on the New York Stock Exchange.”
Between August 1921 and September 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from 63 to an unprecedented 6 times multiple of 381. Then, on October 28, 1929, it fell… disastrously, by 13%. The “crash,” as it was called, ultimately ushered in the Great Depression.
The Roaring Twenties ended with a whimper. The prosperity, the fun, the noise wound down, much like the music on those early hand-cranked record players that slowed and deepened to a dirge as the crank played out.
Illustrations, from above: Jazz, the Charleston, flappers, prohibition and a lot more (All Occasions Catering, Mona Butler); Bandleader and composer Duke Ellington (studentsofhistory.com); advertisement for the first “talkie” (xroads.virginia.edu); U.S. ratifies 18th Amendment headline (The American Issue); Flapper (Wikipedia); and 1925 Ford Model T Touring Car (Wikipedia).
A version of this article was first published in the Blackwell’s Almanac, a publication of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society. The Roosevelt Island Historical Society, founded in 1977 to recover, maintain and disseminate the record of Roosevelt Island’s heritage from colonial times to the present. Visit their website at www.rihs.us.
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