Posts from the Art & Architecture Collection

 Masculine tailoring had always been affected in some degree by military uniforms. In the 1850s, an important element crept into this form of dress: increased comfort. Such an impulse would be more than revolutionary—it would be downright inspirational.

Against such practicality, the occasional flare-up of dandyism had no traction. In fact, the onus was now on the would-be dandy to prove his character wasn’t in question. 

The term “Broadway Brummell” or “Bowery Brummell” could be used with a curled lip. Men were groping their way toward some accommodation with how they appeared. Military trousers now acquired volume, allowing 

Americans still kept a close eye on fashion in Europe. Fashion periodicals found their way to those who could afford them, or appeared in circulating libraries. Later, Godey’s Ladies Book would offer homegrown interpretations of the latest fashions. Waistcoats for men changed in cut according to what was seen in newspapers from abroad. The stovepipe hat began its popular run. In fact, the 1840s mark a turning point in the fortunes of men’s jackets.

At the same time, America’s more egalitarian society meant more latitude for everyday dress. Wealthy ladies in urban locations still played at continental panache. And, of course, the Grand Tour was a major 

Perhaps the truly telling factor in women's lives in the 1830s was how little civil rights they possessed. The women of the later Enlightenment years were more brazen in their demands for personal and legal freedoms. Even the French Revolution had done nothing real for women's liberty. Someone like the late Mary Wollstonecraft would be derided in this century' all her thoughtful writings now criticized in terms of her dubious morality.

Her daughter, the future Mary Shelley, would inherit none of the advantages her mother pleaded for. From an early age, the younger Mary had the gift of storytelling. Unfortunately, her later years, which included the 1830s, were spent under the 

Fashions of the Napoleonic era for women had been dashing. However, larger social forces were at work that now placed a disapproving stamp on this look. While the daintily-shod foot could still peep out from under voluminous skirts, necklines rose and the feminine figure was concealed beneath jaunty collars, puffed sleeves, and other additions.

Another indicator can be seen in the hats - frothy and a harbinger of mroe to come during this century. Rackety King George IV was long dead, and his old sea dog brother would sit on the throne for only a few more years.

A new era was coming. It would be marked by a transition from the House of Hanover to the House of Windsor. Yet 

The 1830s were a time when men’s clothing was affected by the tug and pull of Brummell’s austere dandy elegance and the more ornate flair of D’Orsay’s early dandyism. Men in general didn’t think of themselves as dandies, but the philosophy of men’s dress was heading for an identity crisis. Tailors still reigned supreme at this time, but fashion cycles made for conflicting modes of wear. Men were more and more inclined to move away from the frills and furbelows of earlier phases of dandyism.

While women’s dress grew more elaborate, men’s clothing wavered between hugging and enveloping the masculine figure. The cut of some clothes in 

I want to offer one last example of the state of men’s tailoring in the 1830s. We can see in these two illustrations the effects of military tailoring on civilian jackets and trousers. In both cases, a nipped-in waist is regarded as necessary. The models are quite robust in proportions, excepting this convention—something we’d more readily expect in feminine dress. Clearly, well-fashioned men from this time were expected to display the kind of body type utilized in these illustrations. The reaction I feel is one of tyranny. How many longed to emulate this look but failed to do so, unless forced into male corsetry or similar bindings? Asking men to achieve a 

Historical postcards are among the many images that the Library’s Digital Gallery collects. And I’ve found a gold mine of Easter Bunny cards. How easily does this secular holiday figure fit into our pop culture – you can see just by the types of scenes depicted on these cards. Fertility is one obvious clue to the pagan origins of the Easter Bunny, since rabbits generally have large litters. But why are these furry mammals hauling around chicken eggs? Another fertility symbol, a harbinger of new life. The use of a rabbit or hare for an Easter symbol may have started in Germany. Certainly, the Germans were the first people to make a sweet Easter Bunny, starting with 

At this point, I find myself taking another strategic break. We’re a little over one-third of the way through the nineteenth century. A holiday is coming up, undeniably the most important event of the Christian calendar. But it’s not religion I want to talk about. No, there’s a secular element to this holiday that weighs greatly with me. You see, I am a rabbit owner, and the Easter Bunny lives with me 24/7.

Popular culture has a way of imprinting itself on us. All my life, I’ve looked forward to Easter because of the delight its furry patron creates. How many of you have painted Easter eggs, put together or received an Easter basket replete with phony paper 

The new era of Victorianism affected masculine dress as well. Whether in Europe or America, men found themselves more mistrustful of dandyism. This isn’t to say that dandies didn’t continue to emerge from time to time, often in artistic circles, but the general air was one of cynicism. The illustrations I’ve used for this post are indicative of what two American men from different cultures would wear in the 1830s. An even greater impulse for change would affect men’s clothing. Scholars still argue today over the reasons for this change. One theory calls the decisions ahead “The Great Masculine Renunciation.” Most literature from this time period 

How did women fare in the 1830s? European society was growing more conservative, and the lusty days of the Regency were now looked back on with a shudder. Popular culture might admire the dash of a Count d’Orsay, but, for women, only courtesans and actresses were permitted the same license.

As one consequence, a trend was building for a greater envelopment of the feminine form in fabric. A new age was coming—one with powerful consequences for the future.

It began on the morning of June 20, 1837, when an eighteen year-old girl learned that she had become the reigning monarch of England. Her values would set a whole new standard for communicating gender. In fact, 

In France, a new dandy supplanted previous notions of this masculine mode. Count Alfred d’Orsay was a sensation in London and Paris of the 1820s and 30s. His great physical beauty, dandified dress, and elegant manners had men and women stopping in the streets to stare after him. His private life—he came from an impoverished branch of French aristocracy—proved scandalous when he was “adopted” by a wealthy English Earl and his wife, and no one was exactly sure whose boyfriend he was.

The Count’s dandyism was less restrained than Brummell’s. He favored velvets and coats cut with a dash. Like many members of the cult of celebrity, however, his 

Dandies were viewed with a little more skepticism across the Atlantic. The upheaval in Europe created by Napoleon’s rise and fall brought a steady stream of tailors and would-be dandies to America’s east coast cities. Yet in keeping with a country with more than its fair share of rough edges, the niceties of modish dress were something to regard with suspicion. Nor did it help that the largest showing of dandies regularly turned up in the U.S. Congress. The ambivalent attitude of men in the New World toward Old World dressing didn’t stop them from pursuing similar fashionable looks. Despite a recent war, the ties between Bond Street and Wall Street remained. American 

The NYPL Photography Collection has one of the largest collections of Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographs outside of the Library of Congress. I’m not sure what it is about these images—though given the economic times I’d say they are due for a resurgence—but they continue be some of the most popular and to present some of the most iconic images in American history: Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Okies newly arrived to their hardscrabble yet hopeful life in the interior valleys of California being perhaps the most prominent example.

 Men’s clothing would never be what it is today without George “Beau” Brummell (1778-1840). This ingenious man, the father of the modern dandy, was initially a court favorite who fell from grace. He was a walking advertisement for the modish man. Although he took only one dip into literature, his reformation of masculine style was transformative.  One of the things I find most interesting, however, is how few portraits exist of him. The one or two of those that have come down to us are actually suspect likenesses. And this in an age when English printmakers were at their most vicious and satirical… That Brummell’s influence endured throughout 

“A working class hero is something to be…” -John Lennon Working Class Hero (1970) A change came in the dawning nineteenth century of great significance. The trickle down of fashion grew to encompass the lives of those of the lower orders (as they were called then). A sociological interest in the dress and habits of those people in “reduced circumstances” developed, and left its mark on costume books of the period. While, previously, these books—produced for a well-heeled, erudite audience—concentrated their focus on the clothing of royalty and the aristocracy, certain publications now 

“Show me the clothes of a country and I can write its history.”

— Anatole France (1844 – 1924)

 The start of the nineteenth century has many echoes. Sometimes I can shut my eyes and see them, all the elegant men and women twirling round ballrooms to the lilt of the newly popular waltz. I belong to a generation of young women who grew up on the Regency stories of Georgette Heyer. One encounters in her literature (written mainly in the 1950s) nostalgia for a time “when men were men and women were women.” Some of this has to do with the fact that the century started out with most of Europe at war. Nowadays we 

The New York Public Library held an exhibition in 2004 that illuminated the Library’s rich holdings of the Napoleonic Era; entitled “Decoration In the Age of Napoleon: Empire Elegance Versus Regency Refinement,” it showed the cultural rivalry between the two nations, including the area of fashion. An online bibliography to the Empire and Regency styles is available on the Library’s website. In fact, the French had held the fashion edge since the time of Louis XIV. The English might have a great deal of national pride, but when French fashions arrived from across the Channel, they were the first to take them up. The nineteenth century would change this equation, 

 The watery barriers of islands often prevent the infiltration of outside influences, as seen in the history of Broad Channel. For Hoffman and Swinburne Islands, however, these barriers were intended to keep potentially harmful change from spreading outward. Ellis Island is rightly considered the gateway to New York City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While this is the case, some immigrants took a detour through Hoffman Island or Swinburne Island. The two man-made islands, designated as quarantines for arriving immigrants, were created in the 1870’s in an area of the Lower New York Bay referred to as Orchard Shoals. Hoffman, the larger of the two, detained