Contributed by Katherine Joyce
This photo is of my grandfather, Louis Emundo, his wife, Susan, daughter, Antoinette (my mother-standing up), and her siblings. This family picture was taken around 1921 in New York City.
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Contributed by Allan Williams
This is a photo of my partner’s grandfather, Herbert Hetherington, aged eight years in 1890 outside his mother’s pub, ‘The Cromwell View’ in Brightside Bierlow, Sheffield. He grew up to become a bricklayer lining the furnaces in the steel mills there.
Hi, These pictures are great. I have noticed in searching online and in my own family photographs how formal pictures were in the past (early 1900’s). I find it very interesting how so many people (the Emundo Family) wore their coats, hats, wraps, furs, etc…. when taking their family pictures. Do you think it represented their status in society or that a permanent likeness should be a formal event? Thanks for sharing, Anne Bucci
No, it was not always for a special occasion. People always wore their nicest clothing when going out whether to go shopping or to church or on a picnic. If you will look at photos of people going about everyday business in the early 1900s to about the 1960-70s, you will see that people dressed nicely. Not to show off, that is just how every one dressed. Just like everyone dresses casually now. People today are forgetting how to be comfortable in nice clothes and outfits. If a time machine could bring some of those people back to see us and how we dress today, they wouldn’t understand it.
I was a teenager in the early 60’s. I remember going “downtown” shopping with my friends. Imagine 3 or 4 teenage girls taking the bus and shopping in the Bon Marche, Penneys and other stores, dressed in wool sheaths, pill box hats and white gloves. Then going to the lunch counter in a local dime store and ordering BLTs and cokes. I know that pictures were always taken at special occasions: Easter, Funerals, etc. Of course, we were dressed up then, but picture taking prior to 1920 was a dress up occasion too and a time to show off your nice clothes, because no one “dressed down” except at home and at the lake or picnics, etc.
I agree with the comments on the formality of dress even for “casual” occasions. I have some great photos of family members in the early 1900s at a picnic all dressed up in there finest. I just wish that names had been included, because I have no idea of who they are.