€ŽFrom the Facebook page Very Old Images of New York

Christmas Shoppers, New York City, ca.1910. Photo:

https://postimg.cc/jncbD8Y9/4bf88f4a

"Broadway had long been inseparable from its merchandise, and each new generation repeated the same rapturous descriptions of its shop windows. When King's Handbook of 1893 catalogued Broadway's "silks and velvets, laces and jewels, rich books and music, paintings and statuary, rifles and racquets, confections and amber-like bottles, cloisonné and cut-glass," it was only repeating Walt Whitman's description of thirty-seven years earlier, when he strode up Broadway past "pictures, jewelry, silks, furs, costly books, sculptures, bijouterie, plates, china, cut-glass, fine cloths, fabrics of linen, [and] curious importations from far-off Indian seas."

The opening, in 1846, of Stewart's Marble Palace, with its large plate-glass windows and spacious lounges, has consecrated shopping once and for all as a communal activity. The annual "opening from Europe arrived in stores, was a highlight on the city's social calendar on par with Christmas and New Year's Day. For women, a day spent shopping was a day out of the house, a chance to have lunch with friends and to walk, in an era when women didn't have many opportunities for exercise and recreation.

But there were rules, beginning with a rather inflexible dress code: a dark silk dress, a merino shawl or possibly a fur, a bonnet, and kid gloves. Under no circumstances were fashionable women to appear on Broadway during the summer, as that would imply they had not the means, or the invitations, for trips to Saratoga or the White Mountains.

Shopping was further restricted to the hours between ten o'clock in the morning and two or three o'clock in the afternoon, hours that roughly coincided with the opening and closing gavels of the New York Stock Exchange. And there were geographical constraints, as well: Prior to the mid nineteenth century, the shopping and financial districts coexisted side by side, with substantial overlap, in the City Hall Park area. But as Broadway's commercial center stretched ever northward, an invisible, ever-shifting line formed, which separated the shopping district to the north from the financial district to the south, and women from men.

The shopping district shifted gradually to the north as Broadway's stores closed or moved, subject to the "vicissitudes of trade, the inroads of death and other antagonizing influences," as The Economist put it, but the mercantile world momentarily solidified enough that from the 1860s to the 1890s Broadway's shopping district was defined as the fourteen blocks between Stewart's "Iron Palace," on Broadway between 9th and 10th streets, and Madison Square. They called it "Ladies' Mile."

-- Fran Leadon / Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles

Another contribution from GM's Diarrhea Collection:


On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 15:09:22 -0800 (PST), GM
> wrote:

>
>
>?From the Facebook page Very Old Images of New York
>
>Christmas Shoppers, New York City, ca.1910. Photo:
>
>https://postimg.cc/jncbD8Y9/4bf88f4a
>
>"Broadway had long been inseparable from its merchandise, and each new generation repeated the same rapturous descriptions of its shop windows. When King's Handbook of 1893 catalogued Broadway's "silks and velvets, laces and jewels, rich books and music, paintings and statuary, rifles and racquets, confections and amber-like bottles, cloisonné and cut-glass," it was only repeating Walt Whitman's description of thirty-seven years earlier, when he strode up Broadway past "pictures, jewelry, silks, furs, costly books, sculptures, bijouterie, plates, china, cut-glass, fine cloths, fabrics of linen, [and] curious importations from far-off Indian seas."
>
>The opening, in 1846, of Stewart's Marble Palace, with its large plate-glass windows and spacious lounges, has consecrated shopping once and for all as a communal activity. The annual "opening from Europe arrived in stores, was a highlight on the city's social calendar on par with Christmas and New Year's Day. For women, a day spent shopping was a day out of the house, a chance to have lunch with friends and to walk, in an era when women didn't have many opportunities for exercise and recreation.
>
>But there were rules, beginning with a rather inflexible dress code: a dark silk dress, a merino shawl or possibly a fur, a bonnet, and kid gloves. Under no circumstances were fashionable women to appear on Broadway during the summer, as that would imply they had not the means, or the invitations, for trips to Saratoga or the White Mountains.
>
>Shopping was further restricted to the hours between ten o'clock in the morning and two or three o'clock in the afternoon, hours that roughly coincided with the opening and closing gavels of the New York Stock Exchange. And there were geographical constraints, as well: Prior to the mid nineteenth century, the shopping and financial districts coexisted side by side, with substantial overlap, in the City Hall Park area. But as Broadway's commercial center stretched ever northward, an invisible, ever-shifting line formed, which separated the shopping district to the north from the financial district to the south, and women from men.
>
>The shopping district shifted gradually to the north as Broadway's stores closed or moved, subject to the "vicissitudes of trade, the inroads of death and other antagonizing influences," as The Economist put it, but the mercantile world momentarily solidified enough that from the 1860s to the 1890s Broadway's shopping district was defined as the fourteen blocks between Stewart's "Iron Palace," on Broadway between 9th and 10th streets, and Madison Square. They called it "Ladies' Mile."
>
>-- Fran Leadon / Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles

"GM" > wrote in message
...


€ŽFrom the Facebook page Very Old Images of New York

Christmas Shoppers, New York City, ca.1910. Photo:

https://postimg.cc/jncbD8Y9/4bf88f4a


I like seeing old pics like that.

Cheri