When Marlon Brando Refused the Oscar for His Role in The Godfather to Support the Rights of Native Americans (1973)

in History, Television | September 28th, 2022

At the 45th Acad­e­my Awards, Mar­lon Bran­do won the Best Actor award for his per­for­mance in The God­fa­ther — but sent a Native Amer­i­can civ­il rights activist named Sacheen Lit­tle­feath­er to decline it on his behalf. “The twen­ty-six-year-old activist took the stage in a fringed buck­skin dress and moc­casins,” writes the New York­er’s Michael Schul­man. “When she explained that Brando’s rea­sons for refus­ing the award were Hollywood’s mis­treat­ment of Native Amer­i­cans and the stand­off in Wound­ed Knee, South Dako­ta, there were loud boos and scat­tered cheers.”

More sev­en­ties things have hap­pened, but sure­ly not many. With time, Schul­man writes, “the whole thing cement­ed into a pop-cul­ture punch line: preen­ing actor, fake Indi­an” — the “cry­ing Indi­an” envi­ron­men­tal PSA had aired just a few years before — “kitschy Hol­ly­wood freak show. But what if it wasn’t that at all?”

Almost half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, this notable chap­ter in Oscars his­to­ry has come back into the news in the wake of the Acad­e­my of Motion Pic­ture Arts and Sci­ences’ offi­cial apol­o­gy to Lit­tle­feath­er. It’s now more wide­ly under­stood who Lit­tle­feath­er is, and what Bran­do was going for when he made her his emis­sary that night in 1973.

Bran­do was­n’t espe­cial­ly hes­i­tant to explain his actions even at the time: less than three months after the event, he laid out all his rea­sons on The Dick Cavett Show. “I don’t think that peo­ple gen­er­al­ly real­ize what the motion pic­ture indus­try has done to the Amer­i­can Indi­an,” he tells Cavett. “As a mat­ter of fact, all eth­nic groups.” He then runs down the “sil­ly ren­di­tions of human behav­ior” deliv­ered night­ly on tele­vi­sion, high­light­ing the phe­nom­e­non of “Indi­an chil­dren see­ing Indi­ans rep­re­sent­ed as sav­age, as ugly, as nasty, vicious, treach­er­ous, drunk­en.”

Such clichéd por­tray­als were what Bran­do meant to address by speak­ing through Lit­tle­feath­er. But the pub­lic’s imme­di­ate reac­tion, as Cavett puts it, went along the lines of, “There’s Bran­do jump­ing on a social-cause band­wag­on now, get­ting in on the Indi­ans.” They’d for­got­ten that the actor’s con­nec­tion with Native Amer­i­can caus­es went back at least to 1964, when he was arrest­ed at a Pacif­ic North­west “fish-in” by the Puyallup tribe protest­ing the denial of their treaty rights. And as Lit­tle­feath­er’s fêt­ing by the Acad­e­my shows, that con­nec­tion has long sur­vived even Bran­do him­self.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Map Shows the Seizure of Over 1.5 Bil­lion Acres of Native Amer­i­can Land Between 1776 and 1887

Albert Ein­stein Sports a Native Amer­i­can Head­dress and a Peace Pipe at the Grand Canyon, 1931

1,000+ Haunt­ing & Beau­ti­ful Pho­tos of Native Amer­i­can Peo­ples, Shot by the Ethno­g­ra­ph­er Edward S. Cur­tis (Cir­ca 1905)

The God­fa­ther With­out Bran­do?: It Almost Hap­pened

How Dick Cavett Brought Sophis­ti­ca­tion to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Clas­sic Inter­views Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Most Distant Places Visited by the Romans: Africa, Scandinavia, China, India, Arabia & Other Far-Flung Lands

in History | September 28th, 2022

As we still say today, all roads lead to Rome. Or at least they did at the height of its pow­er, which his­to­ri­ans tend to place in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry. It was in that cen­tu­ry that the Gre­co-Egypt­ian poly­math Ptole­my wrote his book Geog­ra­phy, whose descrip­tion of all known lands inspired an unprece­dent­ed­ly detailed world map. As Ptole­my’s map illus­trates, “the Romans, for all their rhetoric about uni­ver­sal empire, were aware that the world was much larg­er than their domains.” So says ancient-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan in “The Most Dis­tant Places Vis­it­ed by the Romans,” a video essay from his chan­nel Told in Stone.

Ryan explains what his­to­ry has record­ed of “the vast range and reach of Roman mer­chants and adven­tur­ers,” who made it to Africa, Scan­di­navia, India, and even Chi­na. Some may have been moti­vat­ed by pure wan­der­lust (the ancient Roman equiv­a­lent of Eurail-hop­ping col­lege grad­u­ates, per­haps) but sure­ly most of them would have set out on such long, ardu­ous, and even dan­ger­ous jour­neys with glo­ry and wealth in mind.

It was the promise of spices, frank­in­cense, and myrrh, for instance, that drew Roman traders to Ara­bia Felix (or mod­ern-day Yemen), despite the region’s rep­u­ta­tion for being “over­run by fly­ing snakes.”

How­ev­er impres­sive ancient Rome’s geo­graph­i­cal knowl­edge, they clear­ly had yet to get the details straight. But they knew enough to bring back from a vari­ety of far-flung lands not just tall tales but trea­sures unavail­able else­where, turn­ing the metro­pole into a reflec­tion of the world. Few such items would have been as vis­i­ble in Rome as silk, “an indis­pens­able lux­u­ry used in every­thing from legionary stan­dards to the robes of the emper­ors.” That mate­r­i­al came from Chi­na, most often pur­chased through deal­ers in Cen­tral Asia and India. But some par­tic­u­lar­ly adven­tur­ous Romans made it not just to the Mid­dle King­dom but into the very palace of the Chi­nese emper­or. All those roads to Rome were, after all, two-way streets.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Map Show­ing How the Ancient Romans Envi­sioned the World in 40 AD

Ancient Rome’s Sys­tem of Roads Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

The First Tran­sit Map: a Close Look at the Sub­way-Style Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana of the 5th-Cen­tu­ry Roman Empire

Human All Too Human: A Roman Woman Vis­its the Great Pyra­mid in 120 AD, and Carves a Poem in Mem­o­ry of Her Deceased Broth­er

The First Work of Sci­ence Fic­tion: Read Lucian’s 2nd-Cen­tu­ry Space Trav­el­ogue A True Sto­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How the World Trade Center Was Rebuilt: A Visual Exploration of a 20-Year Project

in Architecture, History | September 26th, 2022

The World Trade Cen­ter was not at first a beloved work of archi­tec­ture, but over time it set­tled into its place on the New York sky­line, gain­ing wide accep­tance as an icon of the city. Its destruc­tion on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 great­ly inten­si­fied that sym­bol­ic pow­er, espe­cial­ly as expressed by the image of Minoru Yamasak­i’s Twin Tow­ers. But as long­time New York­ers (or at least long­time Low­er Man­hat­tan­ites) remem­ber, the WTC con­sist­ed of more than a pair of sky­scrap­ers. Dat­ing from Amer­i­ca’s era of “urban renew­al,” with its ambi­tions of build­ing cities with­in cities, it also incor­po­rat­ed sev­er­al short­er office build­ings, a hotel, and an under­ground shop­ping mall.

In oth­er words, the WTC was a com­plex — which also hap­pens to be just the adjec­tive to describe the prop­er­ty-rights sit­u­a­tion in the wake of its dev­as­ta­tion. Talk of the imper­a­tive to rebuild began very soon indeed after Sep­tem­ber 11, but orga­niz­ing a rise from the ash­es was, pre­dictably, eas­i­er said than done. As explained in “How the World Trade Cen­ter Was Rebuilt,” the video essay above from Youtube chan­nel Neo, the Port Author­i­ty of New York and New Jer­sey first had to re-acquire the leas­es from all the dif­fer­ent major ten­ants involved. And then there was the task of nego­ti­at­ing with Lar­ry Sil­ver­stein.

Hav­ing devel­oped the orig­i­nal 7 World Trade Cen­ter build­ing in 1980, Sil­ver­stein long had his eye on the whole she­bang. He final­ly man­aged to sign a 99-year lease-pur­chase agree­ment on the com­plex on July 24, 2001 — sure­ly one of this cen­tu­ry’s sig­nal cas­es of bad tim­ing. But he did jump into the task of rebuild­ing as soon as pos­si­ble, com­plet­ing the new 7 World Trade Cen­ter just five years lat­er. Accord­ing to the sto­ry told in the video, it would hard­ly be an exag­ger­a­tion to char­ac­ter­ize the project of rede­vel­op­ing the WTC site as a grudge match between Sil­ver­stein and the Port Author­i­ty, with their duel­ing visions of the prop­er way to fill that high­ly-charged space.

That project con­tin­ues still today, just over two decades after the ter­ror­ist attacks that brought the Twin Tow­ers down. David Childs’ 1776-foot-tall “twist­ing glass mono­lith” One World Trade Cen­ter opened in 2014, but the much-delayed Ronald O. Perel­man Per­form­ing Arts Cen­ter at the World Trade Cen­ter is still under con­struc­tion, as is the new 2 World Trade Cen­ter. With its recent com­ple­tion, San­ti­a­go Cala­trava’s St. Nicholas Greek Ortho­dox Church joins his exist­ing World Trade Cen­ter Trans­porta­tion Hub. Topped by a struc­ture called the Ocu­lus, designed (if not flaw­less­ly) to open to the sky once a year on Sep­tem­ber 11, that strik­ing tran­sit com­plex also includes an expan­sive West­field shop­ping mall: a jux­ta­po­si­tion of mem­o­ry and com­merce with pow­er of its own as a sym­bol of twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Build­ing of the Empire State Build­ing in Col­or: The Cre­ation of the Icon­ic 1930s Sky­scraper From Start to Fin­ish

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Watch the Com­plete­ly Unsafe, Ver­ti­go-Induc­ing Footage of Work­ers Build­ing New York’s Icon­ic Sky­scrap­ers

Watch a Time­lapse Video Show­ing the Cre­ation of New York City’s Sky­line: 1500 to Present

When The Who Saved New York City After 9/11: Watch Their Cathar­tic Madi­son Square Gar­den Set (Octo­ber 20, 2001)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Why Mapmakers Once Thought California Was an Island

in History, Maps | September 23rd, 2022

In the open­ing of John Car­pen­ter’s Escape from L.A., an earth­quake sep­a­rates Los Ange­les from the main­land, and the city is repur­posed into “the depor­ta­tion point for all peo­ple found unde­sir­able or unfit to live in a new, moral Amer­i­ca.” The film’s premise (like that of Escape from New York, which it fol­lows) taps into a deeply held sen­ti­ment about its set­ting. Los Ange­les has long been seen as an absurd con­cen­tra­tion of all the qual­i­ties that make Cal­i­for­nia unlike the rest of the Unit­ed States. Cal­i­for­nia remains a state apart in a metaphor­i­cal sense, but there was a time when it was also thought to be a state apart, lit­er­al­ly: that is to say, an island.

The word Cal­i­for­nia orig­i­nates in a nov­el, pub­lished in 1510, called Ser­gas de Esp­landián. In that book it refers to “an island pop­u­lat­ed by black women with­out any men exist­ing there. On the entire island, there was no met­al oth­er than gold.” Author Gar­ci Rodríguez de Mon­talvo’s tan­ta­liz­ing descrip­tion of Cal­i­for­nia — as well as of the “beau­ti­ful and robust bod­ies” of its women — got Span­ish sea­far­ers curi­ous about the extent to which it could have been based in real­i­ty.

(At that time, the mass-print­ed nov­el was still an enrap­tur­ing new devel­op­ment.) This account comes from Youtu­ber John­ny Har­ris’ video above, “The Biggest Map­ping Mis­take of All Time,” which con­nects this fan­tas­ti­cal lit­er­ary inven­tion to cen­turies of geo­graph­i­cal mis­con­cep­tion.

The con­quis­ta­dor Hernán Cortés seems to have been the first promi­nent fig­ure to feel the pull of Cal­i­for­nia. And he cer­tain­ly was­n’t the last, despite nev­er quite hav­ing man­aged to pin the place down. Spain’s most ardent Cal­i­for­nia enthu­si­asts held so fast to the notion of its being an island that it spread else­where in Europe, and even­tu­al­ly to Lon­don. With the per­cep­tion thus legit­imized, Cal­i­for­nia appeared dis­con­nect­ed from the North Amer­i­can coast on maps print­ed as far away as Japan. Har­ris cred­its Cal­i­for­ni­a’s “myth­i­cal pull,” then as now, with mak­ing it “a place where peo­ple go to dream big” — and often “to chase dreams that aren’t ground­ed in any sense of real­i­ty.” For­tu­nate­ly, he him­self lives in Wash­ing­ton D.C., where delu­sions are whol­ly unknown.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

The 38 States of Amer­i­ca: Geog­ra­phy Pro­fes­sor Cre­ates a Bold Mod­ern Map of Amer­i­ca (1973)

The Largest Ear­ly Map of the World Gets Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Huge, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal World Map from 1587

Why Every World Map Is Wrong

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Goodbye to the Nakagin Capsule Tower, Tokyo’s Strangest and Most Utopian Apartment Building

in Architecture, History | September 22nd, 2022

On many of my trips to Japan I’ve stayed at the Cap­sule Inn Osa­ka, which is exact­ly where and what it sounds like. To any for­eign­er the place would be an intrigu­ing nov­el­ty, but to those inter­est­ed in Japan­ese archi­tec­ture it also has great his­tor­i­cal val­ue. Designed by archi­tect Kurokawa Kisho, the Cap­sule Inn Osa­ka opened in 1979 as the world’s first cap­sule hotel, a form of lodg­ing now wide­ly regard­ed as no less quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese than the ryokan. At that point Kurokawa had already been advanc­ing cap­sule as an archi­tec­tur­al unit for years, con­tribut­ing a “cap­sule house” and cap­sule-based cor­po­rate pavil­ions to the Osa­ka World Expo 1970, and even build­ing a curi­ous mas­ter­work of the genre in Toky­o’s Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er.

The oth­er archi­tects involved in Expo ’70 includ­ed Tange Ken­zo, Kawa­zoe Noboru, Maki Fumi­hiko, Kiku­take Kiy­onori, and Isoza­ki Ara­ta — all asso­ci­at­ed to one degree or anoth­er with Metab­o­lism, an archi­tec­tur­al move­ment inspired by the rapid eco­nom­ic growth, enor­mous urban expan­sion, and unprece­dent­ed tech­no­log­i­cal change then trans­form­ing post­war Japan. The Metabolists “approached the city as a liv­ing organ­ism con­sist­ing of ele­ments with dif­fer­ent meta­bol­ic cycles,” writes Lin Zhongjie in Ken­zo Tange and the Metabolist Move­ment: Urban Utopias of Mod­ern Japan. “To accom­mo­date a city’s growth and regen­er­a­tion, Metabolists advanced trans­formable tech­nolo­gies based on pre­fab­ri­cat­ed com­po­nents and the replace­ment of obso­lete parts accord­ing to vary­ing life cycles.”

When it opened in 1972, the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er did so as the first ful­ly real­ized Metabolist project. Abroad in Japan host Chris Broad intro­duces it as “not only my favorite build­ing in all of Tokyo, but in all of Japan.” He also con­tex­tu­al­izes it with­in a brief his­to­ry of Metab­o­lism, as well as of the post­war Japan­ese soci­ety that fired up its prac­ti­tion­ers’ aes­thet­i­cal­ly brazen, tech­no-Utopi­an ideals. Geared to the work-dom­i­nat­ed, peri­patet­ic lifestyle of what Kurokawa called “homo movens,” the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er actu­al­ly con­sist­ed of two con­crete cores onto which were bolt­ed 140 cap­sules (archi­tec­tur­al the­o­rist Charles Jencks likened their aspect to “super­im­posed wash­ing machines”), each a self-con­tained liv­ing space replete with cut­ting-edge ameni­ties up to and includ­ing a bath­tub ash­tray Sony reel-to-reel tape play­er.

Kurokawa envi­sioned the cap­sules being replaced every 25 years over a life­time of cen­turies. Alas, the dif­fi­cul­ty of such an oper­a­tion meant that the orig­i­nals were sim­ply left in, and by the end of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry many had bad­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed. “Iron­i­cal­ly,” writes Lin, “Tokyo is grow­ing and trans­form­ing itself so rapid­ly that it even out­paces the ‘metab­o­lism’ that the Metabolists envi­sioned, and requires renewals on the scale of entire build­ings instead of indi­vid­ual cap­sules.” First announced in 2007, the year of Kurokawa’s death, the build­ing’s demo­li­tion began this past April, and it has occa­sioned such trib­utes as Stu­dio Ito’s ele­giac ani­ma­tion just above. The Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er stood for half a cen­tu­ry, long out­liv­ing Metab­o­lism itself, but its cap­sules will now scat­ter across the world, sug­gest­ing that there was some­thing to the bio­log­i­cal metaphor all along.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Build­ing With­out Nails: The Genius of Japan­ese Car­pen­try

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Tour of All the Pizza Styles You Can Eat in the United States (and the History Behind Your Favorite Slices)

in Food & Drink, History, Travel | September 21st, 2022

When it comes to chili, Texas, Kansas City and Cincin­nati, will cede no quar­ter, each con­vinced that their par­tic­u­lar region­al approach is the only sane option.

Hot dogs? Put New York City and Chica­go in a pit and watch them tear each oth­er to rib­bons.

But piz­za?

There are so many geo­graph­ic vari­a­tions, even an impar­tial judge can’t see their way through to a clear vic­tor.

The play­ing field­’s thick as stuffed piz­za, a polar­iz­ing Chica­go local spe­cial­ty that’s deep­er than the deep­est dish.

Weird His­to­ry Food’s whirl­wind video tour of Every Piz­za Style We Could Find In the Unit­ed States, above, savors the ways in which var­i­ous piz­za styles evolved from the Neapoli­tan pie that Ital­ian immi­grant Gen­naro Lom­bar­di intro­duced to New York City in 1905.

Wait, though. We all have an acquain­tance who takes per­verse plea­sure in off­beat top­ping choic­es — look­ing at you, Cal­i­for­nia — but oth­er than that, isn’t piz­za just sauce, dough, and cheese?

How much room does that leave for vari­a­tion?

Plen­ty as it turns out.

Crusts, thick or thin, fluc­tu­ate wild­ly accord­ing to the type of flour used, how long the dough is proofed, the type of oven in which they’re baked, and phi­los­o­phy of sauce place­ment.

(In Buf­fa­lo, New York, piz­zas are sauced right up to their cir­cum­fer­ence, leav­ing very lit­tle crusty han­dle for eat­ing on the fly, though per­haps one could fold it down the mid­dle, as we do in the city 372 miles to the south.)

Sauce can also swing pret­ty wild­ly — sweet, spicy, pre­pared in advance, or left to the last minute — but cheese is a much hot­ter top­ic.

Detroit’s piz­za is dis­tin­guished by the inclu­sion of Wis­con­sin brick cheese.

St. Louis is loy­al to Prov­el cheese, a home­grown processed mix of ched­dar, Swiss, and pro­volone and liq­uid smoke.

Mia­mi piz­zas cater to the palates of its Cuban pop­u­la­tion by mix­ing moz­zarel­la with gou­da, a cheese that was both wide­ly avail­able and pop­u­lar before 1962’s rationing sys­tem was put in place.

Rhode Island’s apt­ly named Red Strips have no cheese at all…which might be prefer­able to the Altoona, Penn­syl­va­nia favorite that arrives topped with Amer­i­can cheese slices or — the hor­ror — Velvee­ta.

(This may be where we part ways with the old saw equat­ing piz­za with sex — even when it’s bad, it’s still pret­ty good.)

Cut and size also fac­tor in to piz­za pride.

Wash­ing­ton DC’s Jum­bo slices are pret­ty much the stan­dard issue New York-style thin crust slice, writ large.

Not only does size mat­ter here, it may be the only thing that matters…to the point where a local busi­ness improve­ment dis­trict had to inter­vene on behalf of side­walk rub­bish bins hard pressed to han­dle the vol­ume of greasy super-sized slice box­es Wash­ing­to­ni­ans were toss­ing away every evening.

In the land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, where small­er towns are under­stand­ably eager to claim their piece of pie, Weird His­to­ry Food gives the nod to Old Forge, Penn­syl­va­nia, opti­misti­cal­ly dubbed “the Piz­za Cap­i­tal of the World by Uncov­er­ing PA’s Jim Cheney, and Steubenville Ohio, home of the “over­sized Lunch­able” Atlas Obscu­ra refers to as America’s most mis­un­der­stood piz­za.

For good mea­sure, watch the PBS Idea Channel’s His­to­ry of Piz­za in 8 slices, below, then rep your favorite local pizze­ria in the com­ments.

We want to try them all!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The First Piz­za Ordered by Com­put­er, 1974

When Mikhail Gor­bachev, the Last Sovi­et Leader, Starred in a Piz­za Hut Com­mer­cial (1998)

Piz­za Box Becomes a Playable DJ Turntable Through the Mag­ic of Con­duc­tive Ink

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Getting Dressed Over the Centuries: 35 Videos Show How Women & Men Put on Clothes During Ancient, Medieval & Modern Times

in Fashion, History | September 20th, 2022

Across vast swathes of the world, many of us — arguably too many of us — have grown accus­tomed to putting on lit­tle more than a T‑shirt and jeans every morn­ing, regard­less of our sta­tus in soci­ety. We all know it was­n’t always this way, but we may not ful­ly under­stand just how much it was­n’t always this way. Through­out most of civ­i­lized human his­to­ry, dress­ing did­n’t just reflect one’s way of life, it prac­ti­cal­ly con­sti­tut­ed a way of life in itself. Thanks to Youtube chan­nel Crow’s Eye Pro­duc­tions, we here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry can enjoy detailed, even cin­e­mat­ic re-cre­ations of the dress­ing process in var­i­ous eras and places the West, from Roman Britain to Renais­sance Flo­rence to 1969 Lon­don.

You can watch all 35 of these dress­ing videos in chrono­log­i­cal order with this playlist. Many of the dressers, includ­ing such august per­son­ages as Prince Albert and Queen Vic­to­ria (on Christ­mas Day, no less), occu­py ele­vat­ed social posi­tions.

But the maids and gar­den­ers of the Vic­to­ri­an era had to get dressed too, and though their cloth­ing may be sim­pler than that worn by the roy­als — or even by the mid­dle class — it’s no less reveal­ing of his­to­ry. One could no doubt tell an even rich­er sto­ry of tech­no­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and cul­tur­al change over the cen­turies through the cloth­ing of “the mass­es” than through the cloth­ing of the elites.

Even war, that most tra­di­tion­al his­tor­i­cal sub­ject of all, has its con­nec­tions with dress. This playlist fea­tures three videos on the dress­ing rou­tines of sol­diers, nurs­es, and young women dur­ing the First World War, as well as one on the mem­bers of the Wom­en’s Land Army dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Estab­lished in 1917, the WLA orga­nized “Land Girls” to take over the agri­cul­tur­al work while the men who’d been doing it were out fight­ing on the front.

This was just the kind of effort neces­si­tat­ed by total war, as well as one that could only have been per­formed by women. It’s also, there­fore, engag­ing­ly approach­able by a series like this, with its pri­ma­ry focus on wom­en’s dress — which, at least since the Great Male Renun­ci­a­tion, has had a pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar his­to­ry of its own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Wealthy Women (Like the Mona Lisa) Got Dressed in Renais­sance Flo­rence

How Fash­ion­able Dutch Women (Like the Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring) Got Dressed in 1665

Author Imag­ines in 1893 the Fash­ions That Would Appear Over the Next 100 Years

Fash­ion Design­ers in 1939 Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

Life Mag­a­zine Pre­dicts in 1914 How Peo­ple Would Dress in the 1950s

Google Cre­ates a Dig­i­tal Archive of World Fash­ion: Fea­tures 30,000 Images, Cov­er­ing 3,000 Years of Fash­ion His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Architect Breaks Down Five of the Most Iconic New York City Apartments

in Architecture, History, Travel | September 16th, 2022

Real estate is a peren­ni­al­ly hot top­ic in New York City, as is gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.

Above, archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er, breaks down the defin­ing fea­tures of sev­er­al typ­i­cal NYC apart­ments.

You’re on your own to truf­fle up the sort of rent a 340 square feet stu­dio com­mands in an East Vil­lage ten­e­ment these days.

The ances­tors would be shocked, for sure. My late moth­er-in-law nev­er tired of caus­ing young jaws to drop by reveal­ing how she once paid $27/month for a 1 bed­room on Sheri­dan Square…and her moth­er, who immi­grat­ed at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, couldn’t wait to put the Low­er East Side behind her.

He may not truck in final sales fig­ures, but Wyet­zn­er drops in a wealth of inter­est­ing fac­tu­al tid­bits as he sketch­es lay­outs with a black Pen­tel Sign Pen. His tone is more Low­er East Side Ten­e­ment Muse­um tour guide than the com­ments sec­tion of a real estate blog where salty New York­ers flaunt their street cred.

For instance, those enfilade ten­e­ment apartments–to employ the grand archi­tec­tur­al term Wyet­zn­er just taught us–were not only dark, but dan­ger­ous­ly under-ven­ti­lat­ed until 1901, when reforms stip­u­lat­ed that air shafts must be opened up between side by side build­ings.

This pub­lic health ini­tia­tive changed the shape of ten­e­ment build­ings, but did lit­tle to stop the pover­ty and over­crowd­ing that activist/photographer Jacob Riis famous­ly doc­u­ment­ed in How the Oth­er Half Lives.

(Anoth­er mea­sure decreed that build­ing own­ers must sup­ply one indoor toi­let …per 20 peo­ple!)

While we’re on the top­ic of toi­lets, did you know that there was a time when every brown­stone back­yard boast­ed its own privy?

Home­own­ers who’ve spent mil­lions on what many con­ceive of as the most roman­tic of New York City build­ings (then mil­lions more on gut ren­o­va­tions) proud­ly dis­play old bot­tles and oth­er refuse exca­vat­ed from the site where privys once stood. The for­mer res­i­dents turn their out­hous­es into garbage chutes upon achiev­ing indoor plumb­ing.

Lay­ing aside its dis­tinc­tive col­or, a brownstone’s most icon­ic fea­ture is sure­ly its stoop.

Stoops grabbed hold of the Amer­i­can public’s imag­i­na­tion thanks to Sesame Street, the Harlem pho­tographs of Gor­don Parks and the films of Spike Lee, who learned of Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion as an 11-year-old, sit­ting on his.

“Not porch!,” he empha­sized dur­ing a Tonight Show appear­ance. ”In Brook­lyn, it’s stoops. Stoops!”

(For­give me if I delve into NYC real estate prices for a sec: the Bed-Stuy brown­stone from Lee‘s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Crook­lyn, above, just went on the mar­ket for $4.5 mil­lion.)

There’s no ques­tion that brown­stone stoops make excel­lent hang out spots, but that’s not the rea­son they rose to promi­nence.

As Esther Crain writes in Ephemer­al New York, the Com­mis­sion­ers’ Plan of 1811 which led to the city’s grid­like lay­out negat­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of alleys:

With­out a back door to a row­house accessed through an alley, ser­vants and work­ers would enter and exit a res­i­dence using the same front stoop the own­ers used—which wasn’t too pop­u­lar, at least with the own­ers. 

But a tall stoop set back from the side­walk allowed for a side door that led to the low­er lev­el of the house. While the own­ers con­tin­ued to go up and down the stoop to get to the par­lor floor (and see and be seen by their neigh­bors), every­one else was rel­e­gat­ed to the side…And of course, as New York entered the Gild­ed Age of busy streets filled with dust, ash, refuse, and enor­mous piles of horse manure, a very high stoop helped keep all the filth from get­ting into the house. 

Flash for­ward a hun­dred and fifty some years, and, as Wyet­zn­er notes, a stoop’s top step offers a high­ly scenic view of the Hefty bags the neigh­bors haul to the curb the night before New York’s Strongest roll through.

Wyet­zn­er also pro­vides the his­tor­i­cal con­text behind such archi­tec­tural­ly dis­tinc­tive digs as SoHo’s astro­nom­i­cal­ly priced light-filled lofts, the always desir­able Clas­sic Six res­i­dences on the Upper East and Upper West Sides, one-room stu­dios both mod­ern and orig­i­nal fla­vor, and our blight­ed pub­lic hous­ing projects.

If you’re itch­ing to play along from home, check out the New York Times’ reg­u­lar fea­ture The Hunt, which invites read­ers to trail a sin­gle, fam­i­ly, or cou­ple delib­er­at­ing between three prop­er­ties in New York City.

A sam­ple: “After a mouse infes­ta­tion at her West Vil­lage rental, a sin­gle moth­er need­ed a bet­ter spot for her fam­i­ly, includ­ing a son with autism.”

Review the lay­outs and click here to see whether she chose a brand-new 127-unit build­ing with a rooftop pool, a Harlem brown­stone duplex with a back­yard rights, or an updat­ed one bed­room in a down­town co-op from 1910.

Relat­ed Con­tent

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Inter­ac­tive Map That Cat­a­logues the 700,000 Trees Shad­ing the Streets of New York City

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. She has lived in all man­ner of New York City apart­ments, but hopes to nev­er move again. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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