100 Years Ago Men and Boys Fought on the Streets of New York Over Wearing Straw Hats Past Summer
1917 advertisement for The Wayne suit.
NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 816986
If you thought wearing white after Labor Day was a risky fashion faux pas, you may not have heard of the Straw Hat Riots of 1922. Over the course of eight days, boys and men fought each other on the streets of New York resulting in injury, jail time, and general mayhem. Here's why...
In the early 1900s, straw hat season for men customarily began on May 15 (Straw Hat Day) and ended on September 15 (Felt Hat Day) and it was considered an etiquette violation to wear the wrong hat outside of these dates. Leading up to each new hat season there was an uptick in newspaper advertising, touting the latest styles or lowest prices, with many shops staying open late to accommodate shoppers.
To mark the end of summer, men would swap out their straw hats in mid-September. Stockbrokers, in an early display of bro culture (and presumably because they could afford to buy a new hat the next year), would playfully smash each other's straw hats, often on the stock market floor, on September 15. (The Pittsburgh Stock Exchange, perhaps in an anti-frivolity stance, lengthened its season in 1921 with the Floor Committee unanimously agreeing that "straw hats may be worn with all the propriety and dignity attached thereto until and including Oct. 1")[New York Times September 16, 1921 "Pittsburg Brokers To Wear Their Hats Until Oct 1"]
Advertisement in The Brooklyn Eagle, May 12, 1922.
The New York Times, September 16, 1922
This celebratory ritual destruction of straw hats evolved beyond the Wall Street set and men who dared to breach the seasonal hat dates (or were just oblivious) became subject to ridicule or having their hats snatched off in disapproval. In 1922, a few days even before the end of straw hat season (for shame!), gangs of teen and pre-teen boys began harassing boater-donning men and stealing or smashing their hats (and sometimes skulls). These attacks and skirmishes went on for eight days with mobs of hundreds on the streets. Newspaper accounts relayed the mayhem:
"Gangs of young hoodlums ran riot in various parts of the city last night, smashing unseasonable straw hats and trampling them in the street...A favorite practice of the gangsters was to arm themselves with sticks, some with nails at the tip, and compel men wearing straw hats to run a gauntlet. [The New York Times, September 16, 1922]
Boys who were guided by the calendar rather than the weather, and most of all their own trouble-making proclivities, indulged in a straw hat smashing orgy throughout the city last night. A dozen or more were arrested and seven were spanked ignominiously by their parents in the East 104 Street police station by order of the lieutenant at the desk. [The New-York Tribune, September 16, 1922]"
Many men fought back (one man presumed to lose an eye) and many youths were brought to Night Court in front of Magistrate Peter A. Hatting (yes, Hatting) who handed down fines and some short jail stays. "It is against the law to smash a man's hat, and he has a right to wear it in a January snowstorm if he wishes," declared Hatting.
From a hundred years out it's hard to understand all the fuss about hats. Perhaps anticipating the angst men were feeling about hat-switch day, Helen Rowland, in a September 5, 1922 column for The Brooklyn Eagle offered her thoughts on men's attachment to their hats:
"The average man's devotion to his HAT is one of life's greatest mysteries. It seems to be something sacred in his life, which he cherishes and protects as passionately as he does his dignity, his honor, and his grandmother's memory. He will fight for it, quarrel over it and risk his life under a motortruck or a trolley car to salvage its remains, in a wind...When a boy wants to start a fight all he does is to snatch another boy's hat—and the battle is on."