Fashion Shows at Rosenbaum’s

by Erin Doane, Curator

For 125 years, Rosenbaum’s was the place in Elmira to get the latest specialty fashions for women and children. From the early 20^th century until it closed in 1989, the business put the newest styles on display for the shopping public in seasonal fashion shows at the store and other locations throughout the community.

Rosenbaum’s fashion show participants, Star-Gazette, October 3, 1933

Rosenbaum’s opened on East Water Street in 1864, just one day before Elmira was chartered as a city. The store began as a wholesale-retail business specializing in custom-made ladies’ hats and millinery trim. Over the years, it expanded to include women’s and children’s clothing and accessories. By 1930, Rosenbaum’s was so popular that it moved to a larger store at 112 West Water Street. It continued expanding throughout the 20^th century until it had three locations – in downtown Elmira, at the Arnot Mall, and at the Oakdale Mall in Binghamton – and had more than 120 employees on its payroll. The business finally closed for good in 1989.

As early as the 1920s, Rosenbaum’s was highlighting its fashions in shows throughout the city. In 1923, the store was a hit at the American Legion Style and Fashion Show at the Armory. The Star-Gazette reported that “a gray afternoon gown of a combination Russianarian and Canton Crepe, shown by Rosenbaum’s and worn by Miss Alma Myers, caused much comment Friday night. The cape of the gown was of poiret twill, lined in turquoise blue canton crepe. Miss Myers wore a broad brimmed, light blue hat with this gown, flower trimmed and underlined with the color of roses.”

Inside Rosenbaum’s on West Water Street, mid-20^th century

After Rosenbaum’s moved in 1930, the company started hosting fashion shows inside the store. Carolyn Modes designs were widely popular at that time throughout the country. By 1938, major Hollywood costume designers including Orry Kelly, Walter Plunket, Edith Head, Howard Greer, and Travis Banton were creating fashions for Carolyn. Rosenbaum’s would bring in members of the Carolyn design staff to conduct fashion shows. Typically, the show was run three times over the course of one day with “living models” displaying the latest clothing of the season. Some of the shows featured outfits that hadn’t even been released to the public yet. One such show on September 28, 1933 brought more than 1,200 people into the store.

Another Carolyn Modes fashion show at Rosenbaum’s in 1934 featured both living models and a famous stylist broadcasting new style notes over the Columbia Broadcasting System in a nation-wide hookup and by special arrangement through the local radio station WESG. http://chemungcountyhistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/12/wesg-broadcasting-live-from-mark-twain.html Years later, in 1955, Rosenbaum’s took advantage of another technology to reach a wider audience for their premiere fashions. “Fashion in the News” was a 20-minute long, full color, 16mm sound film showing a complete wardrobe of new fall clothes by Carolyn. The fashions were worn by “New York’s most famous television and fashion models” and the film was narrated by Vyvyan Donner of Movietone News. Rosenbaum’s loaned the film to women’s clubs, church groups, and other organizations for free.

Teresa Carozza modeling at Rosenbaum’s fashion show, mid-1950s

In 1937, Rosenbaum’s underwent a major expansion and it added the Young Folks Shop to its departments which had a complete line of children’s wear from infant to teenage. This marked a shift to more focus on younger customers. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, the Mademoiselle fashion shows held at the store focused on styles for young women going off to college or starting careers. In 1966, Rosenbaum’s and Eldridge Park sponsored a Miss Southern Tier Queen contest. The winner, 18-year-old Charlotte E. Riedel of Ithaca, was announced during the store’s “Fashion Fit for a Queen” fashion show at the park on August 21. Charlotte received $100 in cash and a $100 gift certificate from Rosenbaum’s.

Rosenbaum’s advertisement, Star-Gazette, August 15, 1955

In 1966, Rosenbaum’s started a Charm and Modeling School for teens and pre-teens. For just $1 a week, girls could take part in a 10-week course taught by Miss Marie Bowman, former Niagara Frontier Milk Princess. Her classes guided the students in the areas of figure and posture correction, wardrobe planning, hairstyling and haircare, good grooming, basic makeup, voice cultivation, self-confidence, charm, poise, and personality development. Those who completed the course of study had the opportunity to model in one of Rosenbaum’s fashion shows. Some of the Charm and Modeling School graduates were actually among the 150 young people who modeled Rosenbaum’s clothing in a fashion show sponsored by Parents Without Partners that November.

Rosenbaum’s Charm and Modeling School students at Parents Without Partners fashion show, left to right: Nancy Henrich, Elizabeth Dixon, and Marie Zwanka, Star-Gazette, December 4, 1966

Rosenbaum’s continued adverting the newest styles in fashion shows at its stores and at offsite locations as fundraising events for groups like the Elmira Newcomers Club, the YWCA, the Zonta Club, and the Rotary Anns for nearly fifty years. The company showed off its latest seasonal looks one last time on November 30, 1988 at the Christmas Gala Fashion Show at St. Patrick’s Church in Elmira. Rosenbaum’s closed its downtown store just two months later. The store at the Arnot Mall lasted ten more months before closing as well.

 

The Nudes in the Directory

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

A couple years ago, one of my coworkers stumbled across an advertisement for Van Patten Plumbing and Heating Co. in a 1930s Elmira City Directory featuring a nude woman in the bath. We thought it was a little bizarre, not because we are particularly prudish, but because the city directory is a publication with all of the eroticism of a phone book. While the images aren’t terribly explicit (your definitions may vary), the directory really isn’t the place you’d expect to see a nude photograph of any kind. Now, I have finally gotten around to investigating the mystery of the nudes in the directory.

When I see this, my main concern is that unless she pulls the shower curtain, that lady is going to get water all over the floor. I'm clearly not the target audience for this ad.

First, I headed back to the directories themselves. I found the image above only in the 1935 Elmira directory. It is the first Van Patten nude advertisement, but not the last. In the years prior, from 1929 to 1934, they ran the far more wholesome image below.

So wholesome

There was no advertisement for the company in the 1936 directory, but 1937 brought a new nude photo. The advertisement below, however, had a longer run than its naked predecessor did. It ran in the 1937, 1939, 1941, and 1942 directories (the company didn’t run any directory ads in 1938 or 1940).

Just a lady, casually loofah-ing her foot

After those ads, the company’s next was in 1944, which was just the plain text below. They didn’t publish any more images, nudes or otherwise.

Now I had found that the nude photos were actually in FIVE directories. I had so many questions: Why did they choose to run these? What was this company’s reputation? What was the public response? Was this typical?

I started by looking for information about Van Patten Plumbing and Heating. What I found was horribly regular. Far from having any kind of deviant public reputation, Van Patten seemed to be a pretty typical heating and plumbing firm of the time. I found information on construction bids they won and lost. I found members of the family who were having birthday parties or starring in school plays. That was it.

Elmira Star-Gazette, April 2, 1935

There seemed to be no press mention of the nude photos. Nothing. And the company’s newspaper ads from the time were far more clothed. These ads all showed stylish women, in full-dress, selling washing machines. These model housewives were not just shilling appliances, but also the dream that every regular Elmira housewife could also attain the level of glamour that only high-quality refrigerator can bring a woman.

Which refrigerator will make me look like this classy lady?
Elmira Star-Gazette, May 21, 1935

So why did they run this ad if they weren’t some edgy company that wanted to make old ladies blush as they thumbed through the yellow pages looking for church listings? One theory I had was that they did it to attract attention. Remember, in 1935, the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. Construction work could be hard to come by. Maybe this ad was a ploy to get more eyes on their ads than their competitors. Hey, lecherous money spends the same!

Elmira Star-Gazette, September 18, 1935

There might be some merit to this theory. Van Patten and other plumbing outfits were feeling the pressure. In April 1935, Van Patten joined other appliance sales firms in protest of the Elmira Light, Heat & Power Corporation’s new system of allowing patrons to purchase appliances from them with installment payments. They believed that the utility company was unfairly undercutting them. That combined with the Depression, the coffers were likely low.

Finances may have been improving by 1938. Van Patten got some more jobs with the low bids for Dunn Field’s plumbing ($5,641), Elmira Free Academy’s heating and ventilation ($27,794), plumbing for the new School Five ($8,444), and plumbing for the new Bern Furniture Company. Still, they ran the nudes for three more years (1939, 1941, and 1942). Maybe they thought it made a difference.

Another possibility is that perhaps the newspaper and directory ads, with their stark differences in stark nakedness, were intended for different audiences. The newspaper ads are clearly selling women on the appliances they were expected to be using every day. I’m not sure that plumbing and bath fixtures are intrinsically more masculine than refrigerators, but maybe they had reason to believe that titillated men bought more tubs than housewives. Also, with a price tag of $10 each in 1935 (when the first photo ran) and $12 in 1941 (the last year for the photos), the audience for the directory would have been smaller than the newspaper. Folks struggling to feed themselves in the midst of the Depression wouldn’t likely shell out that sum for a book that was only good for a year, nudie pics or not.

The next thing I considered was the maker of the photographs. These were not images commissioned or taken by the folks at Van Patten. Instead, these were advertising images from American Standard (then as the Standard Sanitary Plumbing division). None of the company’s other illustrated or photograph advertisements that I can find online approach the level of nakedness of these two. This made me wonder then if these ads were even supposed to be made public. Were these actually the 1930s equivalent of the posters and calendars you see at the mechanic with nude women splayed across sports cars and posing seductively with power tools?

With that information, it was now time for me to do some more research about attitudes towards nudity during the 1930s. I knew that the Hays Code kicked into full enforcement in 1934, sanitizing the film industry, which up to that point had been pretty open to gratuitous nudity. It didn’t really apply to print, but given the timing of the first nude ad, I wondered if the Van Pattens were sending a political middle finger to the Hollywood prudes. Probably not, but I like the thought.

Look at this unsexy bathroom ad for comparison.
Elmira Star-Gazette, September 6, 1941

In fact, with a little more digging, I found that female nudity in print ads was pretty common around this time and it was intended for both male and female consumers. A 1936 Woodbury’s Soap ad is recognized by experts as one of the first (some recognize it as the first, but that is untrue given that these Van Patten ads start in 1935). In his book The Erotic History of Advertising, Tom Reichert discusses how companies used nude models, but didn’t show nipples or genital. These more benign nudes show up in advertisements in major magazines, like Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping, suggesting that the average consumer was not offended by a little butt cheek. For women, the nudes could be an aspirational model of beauty, which is just what the soap companies wanted them to think (some things never change). Trade magazines, however, were a different story. Because they were targeted at a male audience, the nudes in these publications were more explicit (though not by modern standards).

If you’re still reading this at this point, I wish I had some big historical reveal (pun intended) for you. In short, the real story seems to be some combination of the reasoning I’ve outlined above. What is the most interesting thing for me is that the 1935 ad seems to be one of the first known nude advertisement of its kind from this era. So really, Standard Sanitary and Van Patten were a little ahead of their time. The strange little nudes in the directory might actually be quite historically significant. 

Puttin’ on the Ritz

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

Most people have a pretty good idea of what a 1920s-era flapper looked like, but do you know how a fashionable young man of the period would have looked?  Using examples from Sears catalogs, here’s a look at what the well-dressed man of the 1920s was wearing from the top of his hat to the tips of his shoes.

Hats – During the 1920s, no respectable person would be seen out of doors without a hat, and that included men.  Different types of men wore different types of hats.  Laborers wore the newsboy, professionals wore fedoras or homburgs, and summer sportsmen wore boaters.  For more information on men’s hats, check out this blog post for details.

All sorts of hats, 1929

Hair – A man’s hair was to be worn 5” to 7” long and was slicked down and back.  The sides and back were kept short.  To keep hair in place, not to mention looking glossy, men used hair oils like Hair Silk, Glostora or Brilliantine.  While the oils helped keep hair smooth and flat, they often stained hats, pillows, chair backs, and pretty much anything hair came in contact with.  

A selection of products to make your hair extra slick

Facial hair – These days the perma-stubble look is in, but in the 1920s, your average young man would have been clean-shaven.  A mustache, maybe, but anything more would be pushing it.  New technologies like safety razors made shaving a breeze.  For more on the history of shaving, check out this blog post.

Ties – The bowtie had been the preferred neckwear of the 1800s, but by the 1920s it was losing ground to the necktie.  Bowties, especially in vibrant colors and patterns, remained popular as summer wear, but for the rest of the year the necktie was king.  Bright colors and patterns were in, especially stripes.  Since most people wore them with three piece suits, ties tended to be short.  For formal wear, white bowties remained a must. 

I wish this ad was in color

Shirts and Collars – Victorian shirt collars were detached for easy washing and so starched they could stand on their own.  The 1920s were a period of transition between this older style and the attached, soft collars we have today. 

Note the mix of shirts with and without collars.

A selection of detachable collars, cuff links and garters for keeping up your socks.

Suits – For a gentleman out on the town, a three piece suit was a must.  Most older business men tended to wear double-breasted suits with slightly cinched-in waists and hip-length jackets.  Fashionable young men preferred the so-called Ivy League or Cake Eater suits which were single-breasted with narrow lapels, longer jackets and very wide pants.  Conservative dressers preferred darker, solid colors like Navy blue, black, dark gray or brown.  They younger set went in for lighter shades with stripes, chevrons and twills.  In the summer, less conservative types might often forgo the vest under the jacket. 

Fashionable young Cake Eaters and that one weird kid in a double-breasted suit

Shoes – The lace-up book had been the style for decades.  While they remained popular with workers and conservative types, the Oxford shoe became the style of the day.  Most were either brown or black, but two-toned shoes became popular in more casual settings.   

An assortment of Oxford shoes.

If you’d like to learn more about fashion in the 1920s, be sure to come to today’s Out to Lunch Lecture on life in the 1920s. 

The Cereal Beverage and “High-Powered Beer” Scandal

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

When 18^th Amendment and national Prohibition went into effect in 1920 (local prohibition went into effect in Elmira in 1918), brewers scrambled to find new ways to stay in business.  Some continued to produce beer illegally, but others found ways to work with the Volstead Act.  Under the new law, only “near beer” containing less than 0.5% alcohol could be produced and sold.  In fact, the law was so strict that this drink couldn’t even be labeled “near beer,” and instead had to be sold as “cereal beverage.”

Trade card for the Chemung Beverage Co.'s cereal beverage.

In May 1927, the Chemung Beverage Company of Elmira received a permit from the federal prohibition enforcement agency to produce cereal beverage for 4 months.  At that time, they were only one of only two breweries in New York State permitted to do so.  As part of the permit agreement, federal prohibition agents were to inspect the brewery regularly to make sure all of the near beer met the Volstead standards. The Chemung Beverage Company moved into the old Briggs Brewery building, which had been abandoned for over a year. Employees cleaned up rust and dust for almost two months to make the space operational. 

Plans for a Chemung Beverage Company building from several months before they were issued a permit. 

The Chemung Beverage Company didn’t stick with the “non-intoxicating beverage” business for long.  At 10pm on August 5, 1927, Federal prohibition investigator F.J. Raymond led a raid on the Chemung Beverage Company and discovered employees loading train cars with “high-powered brew.”  Employees Ed Kennedy, J. Heisler, Frank Schmalesberg, and Benjamin L. Heyman were arrested along with the owner and permit holder, Frank Teitlebaum .  There was an estimated $20,000 worth of beer at plant. 

The former Briggs Brewery building as it looked at the time of the Chemung Beverage raid.

In September, the Chemung Beverage Company officially got its cereal beverage permit revoked.  In November, prohibition agents disposed of the 63,756 gallons (2,024 barrels of high-test beer and 400 barrels of near beer) seized by dumping it into the sewers. The building was padlocked and guarded.

In the fallout, Teitlebaum and the other men involved received hefty fines.  In May of 1928, Roscoe C. Harper, the Prohibition chief for Western New York, and Donald V. Murphy, the Prohibition agent in Elmira, were arrested for conspiracy to violate the National Prohibition Act.  Harper was the person who granted the permit to Chemung Beverage Company a year before.  The corruption and flouting of the Volstead Act continued in the city (as evidenced by the many subsequent raids of other brewers) until Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

Lubricators and Puns

by Erin Doane, curator

The other day I came across an odd item in collections storage. That in itself is not unusual. With over 20,000 historic objects here at the museum, I’m bound to find things I haven’t seen before. This item is a group of 50 advertising cards for The Swift Lubricator Co. of Elmira. A small picture is glued to the back of each card with a number written in pencil above it and a word or phrase below – Bird or Fowl, Animal, Vegetable, Flower, or Composer of Music. The pictures themselves show a wide variety of things, from a teacher in front of a classroom to children in a field to a goat crashing into a mug. The whole pack of cards was a mystery and I decided to investigate.

Advertisement on one side of the card

Game on the other side

The Swift Lubricator Co. was started by Allen W. Swift around 1885. Swift first appears in the Elmira city directories in 1877. He is listed first as a steam engine manufacturer and then as a lubricator manufacturer. In 1882 he was granted a patent for a steam engine lubricator that he had invented. An October 3, 1884 Commercial World & United States Exporter article describes how Swift’s lubricator worked. “…the steam passes it [the lubricator] on its way to the cylinder, a small portion of the live steam carries with it into the valve chest and through this into the cylinder, a constant succession of drops of oil which it reduces to the condition of vapor, so finely are its particles divided. The oil vapor enters with the steam into every part of the valve, chest and cylinder and secures them a perfect lubrication.” Railroads including the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railroad and the Chicago and Alton Railroad used these lubricators on their locomotives. Over 200 of them were sold in June 1884.

Swift's lubricator patent

So, what does all that have to do with the pile of cards I found? Not much, really. The cards were obviously used to advertise the Swift Lubricator Co. but I think the pictures on the back were added later and have little to nothing to do with the company. My guess is that someone repurposed leftover cards. When the cards were produced, the company was located on 730 W. 1^st Street. Around 1900, the business moved to 729-731 W. 2^nd Street. The cards with the old address then became useless. Someone, perhaps a member of the Swift family, perhaps not, took fifty of the cards, added pictures to the backs and created a game. Fortunately, someone included a numbered list with the cards so we can understand how the game was played. Each picture represents a bird, an animal, a flower, etc. as indicated by the category written below it in pencil. You have to guess what the picture is. For example, the picture of the teacher at the blackboard I included above is from the vegetable category and represents peas. Got it? Here’s some more to try with the answers at the bottom of this post.

Answers: 1: pheasant; 10: robin; 14: woodchuck; 21: tomatoes; 32: hollyhock; 40: buttercup; 41: Schumann

Click here for a pdf with all 50 cards and the answer key. Disclaimer: a couple of the images are racist. There’s no other way to say it. The game is a product of its time and CCHS does not endorse any such cultural depictions.