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With Baz Luhrmann's remake of seminal novel The Great Gatsby out tomorrow ( trailer!), everyone's gone mad for the 1920s all over again. Lavish theme parties, mood music, flapper-esque costumes from Prada and bejeweled diadems a la Tiffany's... and the list goes on. But what about its geography? Sure, this is fiction, and F. Scott Fitzgerald was apparently not overly concerned with accuracy while working on the novel across the pond in France and Italy. But to look at the city through Gatsby-colored glasses is to see it at a romantic, decidedly different time, and that's why we made this map: nostalgia.

The novel is set in the New York of 1922, and Midwestern transplant Nick Carraway, his enigmatic neighbor Jay Gatsby, and societal creme de la creme Daisy and Tom Buchanan and golf star Jordan Baker divide their time between the North Shore of Long Island and the city, where they eat, drink, drive, flirt, and generally live the good life?embracing very kind of vapid values and utter carelessness that Fitzgerald ultimately skewers by the end. But man, did they have a good time doing it. "I began to like New York," Carraway, our narrator, says, "the racy adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye." (So maybe not that much has changed.)

Much of the plotline takes place in West and East Egg?modern-day Great Neck and Port Washington, respectively?which is excluded from our blog's purview. But characters frequent Manhattan and even the no-man's-land middle ground of Flushing, Queens, to further their debauchery, carry on affairs both illicit and endearing, and battle out their most intense arguments.

"As a social historian, Fitzgerald utilized real places and real details for the denotations and connotations these references generated in informed readers," writes the late F. Scott expert Matthew J. Bruccoli. "As an impressionist, Fitzgerald sought to convey, by means of language and style, the emotions associated with actual and fictional settings." So the inclusion of places like the Plaza Hotel and the Yale Club, and areas from Central Park to Washington Heights, were completely intentional. Here now, 19 real-world NYC counterparts to locations in The Great Gatsby, complete with excerpts that shed some light on a bygone era, one that was defined by so much more than parties.

· An Index to The Great Gatsby [brtom.org]
· NYC Buildings Where Great Literary Works Were Written [Curbed]
· All Curbed Maps [Curbed]
?All photos except Flushing Meadows-Corona Park via the Museum of the City of New York; park photo via Wikimedia Commons

6 Yale Club of New York City

At the end of native Midwesterner Nick's sometimes lonely days working in the city as a bond salesman, he retreats to his alma mater's club on Vanderbilt Avenue (where it still is today). It was an unusual respite of scholarly solitude: "I took dinner usually at the Yale Club—for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day—and then I went upstairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour. There were generally a few rioters around, but they never came into the library, so it was a good place to work."

50 Vanderbilt Ave
New York, NY 10017

7 Murray Hill Hotel

Nick Carraway's nightly commute progressed from the Yale Club over to Penn, passing this grand Victorian lodging house: "If the night was mellow, I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel and over Thirty-Third Street to the Pennsylvania Station."

Anywhere!
New York, NY 10016

8 The 40s near Fifth Avenue

Nick's commute continues, giving us a sense of the vitality of 1920s street life. Nick, like all New Yorkers, harbored fantasies about total strangers, as he was at once surrounded by people and at the same time not able to shake a sense of isolation: "I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them back to their apartments on corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes..." That sense of disconnectedness and soullessness amid the busy city continues as Nick walks towards Penn: "Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theater district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside." Nick, in this moment, feels excluded from the city's private, exclusive, hard-to-crack social scene.

10 E 40th St
New York, NY 10016

11 New Amsterdam Theater

This is where Florenz Ziegfeld's show full of showgirls, "Follies," was performed in the 1920s. Starlet Gilda Gray's understudy was a much-buzzed about attendee at one of Gatsby's West Egg soirees. In fact, lots of "theatrical people" came to Gatsby's beachfront ragers.

14 The Plaza

The iconic hotel is where Nick Carraway has tea with Jordan Baker, and, later, where the whole gang gathers on a hot summer day in the parlor of a suite for some raucous arguments between Gatsby and Tom Buchanan over Daisy that precede a sad accident on the way home to Long Island. It turned out that their attempt to beat the heat merely resulted in more heat: "The notion originated with Daisy's suggestion that we hire five bathrooms and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as 'a place to have a mint julep.'... The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four o'clock, opening the windows only admitted a gust of hot shrubbery from the Park."

768 5th Ave
New York, NY 10019

15 Central Park

Nick Carraway and on-again/off-again flame golf pro Jordan Baker go on a romantic evening drive "in a Victoria" (an old-school car, one presumes). It was an ideal setting for some flirtin': "The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties and the clear voices of little girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight... It was dark now and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder and drew her to me... We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of Fifty-ninth Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the Park."

59th St to 110th St
New York, NY 10028

Related Maps

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Mapping The 1920s New York City Of The Great Gatsby

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With Baz Luhrmann's remake of seminal novel The Great Gatsby out tomorrow ( trailer!), everyone's gone mad for the 1920s all over again. Lavish theme parties, mood music, flapper-esque costumes from Prada and bejeweled diadems a la Tiffany's... and the list goes on. But what about its geography?

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The first cover of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" in 1925 features the artwork of Francis Cugat.

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The first cover of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" in 1925 features the artwork of Francis Cugat.

" Celestial Eyes," the name of the painting, is inarguably one of the most recognizable book covers ever created.

Fitzgerald took such a fancy to the artwork that he wrote it into the book.

If you head to bookstores now, you may be hard-pressed to find those eyes staring out at you.

Last week, publisher Scribner released a movie tie-in edition of the classic featuring Leonardo DiCaprio looking out at the reader with Carey Mulligan looking distantly onward below.

If you're partial to the original jacket, don't worry. You can still purchase the classic look.

The New York Times reports Scribner sells approximately 500,000 copies of the book each year.

Since its initial printing in 1925, "The Great Gatsby" has been translated into 42 languages including Spanish, French, and Russian.

Though Cugat's book jacket is the most iconic one to associate the book with today, its far from the only fancy book art.

We've compiled some of the different covers of the book since its launch.

"The Great Gatsby" is in theaters May 10.
There are many variations on the American version of the novel. This version cleverly hides Daisy's face to keep the illusion of her face. While another highlights Gatsby's car from the trailer. This one references the green light from the book. A movie tie-in with the 1949 film features Alan Ladd in one of the novel's end scenes. Note the line at the top, "The Great Novel Of The Sinful Twenties." In other countries, the book looks really different. Here's one version of a book in China. This Russian paperback is more regal. This French cover suggests a meeting between Gatsby and Daisy. And a Spanish cover shows part of Gatsby's car. Many reference the lavishness and looks of the roaring '20s:

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11 'Great Gatsby' Book Covers From Around The World

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The first cover of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" in 1925 features the artwork of Francis Cugat. " Celestial Eyes," the name of the painting, is inarguably one of the most recognizable book covers ever created. Fitzgerald took such a fancy to the artwork that he wrote it into the book.

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Blog

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In the novel The Great Gatsby, there is a role of new money and old money, not a new form of currency, but those who are new to wealth, and those who have had it in their families for a long time. Both are in the same class of wealth, but new money and old money spend their wealth differently, and have different maturities while handling their money.

The newly rich, or the new money, like Jay Gatsby, live in West Egg. "Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste."(http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/themes.html) Gatsby is a perfect example of this. Gatsby tries to be all flashy and impressive with his money, which is very irresponsible a nd unwise. He drives a fancy car, a Rolls-Royce, has a monstrous mansion bu himself, and throws parties non-stop to impress people, and to try to lour Daisy back to him. He uses the newly wealth he has to do this, which he obtained from a life of crime, in the bootlegging business.

The old money, peop le of East Egg, aren't as irresponsible with their wealth, and know how to handle what they have. "What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money's ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others"(http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/themes.html) Daisy and Tom Buchanan are a perfect example of this selfishness. They both will simply move on, and leave the messes that they made for somebody else to clean up. They're both never satisfied, and cheat on one another. These East Eggers are no better than the irresponsible new money from West Egg.

In conclusion, new money is less responsible, but despite that quality, people like Gatsby are caring and have a big heart, and actually do give a damn about other people. The old money knows how to handle their money, but being so used to that wealth are extremely selfish, and come off to be worse people, like Tom and Daisy Buchanan.

Sources: The Great Gatsby
Sparknotes.com
123helpme.com

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In the novel The Great Gatsby, there is a role of new money and old money, not a new form of currency, but those who are new to wealth, and those who have had it in their families for a long time.

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First published April 10, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" gripped the American imagination and, almost a century later, has yet to relinquish its hold. Its personal, poignant narrative, fatally flawed but perfectly drawn characters, and ability to capture a particular place and time set it apart in 20th century American literature.

The story is a cautionary tale, to be sure: the illusory power of the past, the idea of money solving any or all of one's problems, the mixed bag of virtue and foible that make up each human being, the harsh reality of having your dreams come true. But it also presents another eternal, if less examined conflict, that of Old Money vs. New Money.

Gatsby has acquired the enormous house, the garish clothes, and the fast cars. Yet his mysterious past and bizarre behavior-he has few friends and doesn't bother to even attend the lavish parties he hosts-cement his dubious social standing, "Wealthy, but not one of us," in status-conscious Long Island. Gatsby could have been a cliché of the nouveau riche criminal class, but Fitzgerald reveals a vulnerability and awkwardness in him, tethered to a near-universal motivation: he's done everything he's done just to try to get his girl back.

Tom Buchanan, on the other hand, is Old Money, but displays the worst characteristics of it. He is arrogant, self-centered, and petty. When it comes down to brass tacks, he shirks responsibility for his actions and, after tragedy befalls others, he slips away in the night, his honor tucked under his arm like stolen goods. It's a scenario we've already heard or read about before: wealth and privilege, behaving badly and walking away from the consequences, unscathed.

There's another side of Old Money, however, that makes for a less interesting story, but a more interesting study. It's the Old Money that has integrity; that lives far below its means; that raises it children to be productive, well-adjusted adults; that uses its position and resources not just to preserve and expand its wealth, but to quietly make the world a better place for everyone.

While much of what comprises the culture of Old Money is antithetical to modern society, it has nothing to do with being a snob. Old Money dresses and behaves so that it is not obvious how much money it has or what position it holds in society. Old Money treats others without regard for how much money they have or what position they hold in society.

The geographic epicenter of this culture is Boston, where my wife was raised and educated. Tellingly, the city is also where a Beacon Hill billionaire was recently seen scraping the ice and snow off his own car one morning, just like many other citizens of the city. Make no mistake, some Boston Brahmins (more often pretenders to that throne) can be as elitist as anyone, but their core values of thrift, discretion, hard work, and public service are well-documented. In a world of professional athletes and entertainers constantly proclaiming their own greatness while bathing in bling-and just prior to filing for bankruptcy-such attitudes are refreshing.

Almost two centuries ago, the newly-minted Old Money families of Boston sought to make their city the "Athens of America". They realized that their quality of life depended on not just their personal wealth, but on the well-being of the general population. They rightly concluded that a well educated, productive, and ethical citizenry would serve everyone well. Consequently, they put their money to work, building universities, libraries, museums, and hospitals. Walking through the city today, it's easy to argue that they realized their vision.

The Old Money families of Boston, and of other major cities in America, personify a code of behavior: that of an educated, articulate individual who places the interests of his or her community on par with their own personal interests. They prioritize quality of life over a standard of living, eschewing vulgar displays of wealth. They pass this philosophy on to their children, and their children to their children. They act as role models for New Money and the general public.

Old Money is a culture and a philosophy that creates great people, great cities, and great nations. It holds its adherents to a higher standard of behavior, but pays great dividends. If talent does what it can and genius what it must, then Old Money does what it should.

Gatsby, for all his faults, may have understood that. Tom Buchanan, for all his money, never would. - BYRON TULLY
Byron Tully is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter happily married to a proper Bostonian. "The Old Money Book" is his first book and is available on Kindle and Nook.

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The Great Gatsby And Old Money Versus New

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First published April 10, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" gripped the American imagination and, almost a century later, has yet to relinquish its hold. Its personal, poignant narrative, fatally flawed but perfectly drawn characters, and ability to capture a particular place and time set it apart in 20th century American literature.

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The 1920s is the decade when America's economy grew 42%. Mass production spread new consumer goods into every household. The modern auto and airline industries were born. The U.S. victory in World War I gave the country its first experience of being a global power. Soldiers returning home from Europe brought with them a new perspective, energy, and skills. Everyone became an investor thanks to easy access to credit. That hidden weakness helped cause the Great Depression.

Key Takeaways

Economic Growth and Output

The economy grew 42% during the 1920s, and the United States produced almost half the world's output because World War I devastated large parts of Europe. New construction almost doubled, from $6.7 billion in 1920 to $12 billion in 1926. Aside from the economic recession of 1920 and 1921, when by some estimates unemployment rose to 11.7%, for the most part, unemployment in the 1920s never rose above the natural rate of around 4%.

Per-capita GDP rose from $6,460 to $8,016 per person, but this prosperity was not distributed evenly. In 1922, the top 1% of the population received 13.4% of total income. By 1929, it earned 14.5%.

The United States transformed from a traditional to a free market economy. Between 1920 and 1929, farming declined from 13% of the economy to 10.3%, and the portion of the population living on farms fell from 30.1% to 25.2%. At the same time, new inventions sent the manufacturing of consumer goods soaring. According to a presentation by the California State University, Northridge, real gross domestic product was as follows:

1920: $687.7 billion

1921: $671.9 billion

1922: $709.3 billion

1923: $802.6 billion

1924: $827.4 billion

1925: $846.8 billion

1926: $902.1 billion

1927: $910.8 billion

1928: $921.3 billion

1929: $977.0 billion

Stock Market

After dropping by more than 32% in 1920, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped from a value of 63.9 points in August 1921 to a high of more than 381 points before the market crashed in October 1929.

One reason for the boom was because of financial innovations. Stockbrokers began allowing customers to buy stocks " on margin." Investors only needed to put down 10-20% of the price of a stock and brokers would lend them the remaining 80-90%. Buying on margin enabled investors to purchase more stock than they could previously afford and, subsequently, realize higher gains if the stock price went up. This same innovation became a weakness when stock prices fell during the 1929 stock market crash.

Only one-third of the nation's 24,000 banks belonged to the Federal Reserve System. Non-members relied on each other to hold reserves. That was a significant weakness. It meant they were vulnerable to the bank runs that occurred in the 1930s.

Another weakness was that banks held fictitious reserves. Checks were counted as reserves before they cleared. As a result, these checks were double-counted by the sending bank and the receiving bank.

Timeline of Events

1920: A recession began in January. The highest marginal tax rate was 73% for those earning more than $1 million. Almost 70% of federal revenue came from income taxes.

1921: Warren Harding became president. The recession ended in July without any intervention. Congress increased the corporate tax rate from 10% to 12.5%. The Emergency Immigration Act restricted the number of immigrants to 3% of the 1910 U.S. population.

1922: Harding reduced the top income tax rate from 73% to 58%.

1923: Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president after Harding died from a heart attack while on a speaking tour in San Francisco. His motto was "The business of America is business." The Supreme Court revoked the minimum wage for women in Washington, D.C. A recession began in May. The stock market began a six-year bull run.

1924: The recession ended in July. The Revenue Act of 1924 lowered the top rate to 46%, according to the Tax Foundation.

1925: Top tax rate lowered to 25%. The corporate tax rate increased to 13%. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover warns Coolidge about stock market speculation. Most countries returned to the gold standard. More than 25% of families owned a car.

1926: A mild recession began in October. The corporate tax rate increased to 13.5%. Robert Goddard invented the liquid propulsion rocket, creating a U.S. advantage in defense. More than 2 million farmers moved to the cities, but only 1 million city folk moved to rural areas.

1927: The recession ended in November after the Fed lowered the discount rate from 4% to 3.5% in September. Charles Lindbergh flew solo from New York to Paris on May 20-21.

1928: Stock prices rose 39%. To stop speculation, the Fed raised the discount rate from 3.5% to 5%. It also sold securities to banks as part of its open market operations. That removed cash from their reserves. Other countries responded by raising rates, even though they were still rebuilding from World War I.

1929: Herbert Hoover became president. He lowered the top income tax rate to 24% and the top corporate tax rate to 12%. The Great Depression began in August, as the economy started shrinking. In September, the stock market reached its peak. The stock market crashed on Oct. 24. During those same months, the Graf Zeppelin completed the first around-the-world flight.

Why Are the 1920s Known as the "Roaring Twenties"?

U.S. prosperity soared as the manufacturing of consumer goods increased. Washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators became everyday household items. By 1934, 60% percent of households owned radios. By 1922, 60 radio stations broadcast everything from news to music to weather reports. Most of them used expanded credit offered by a booming banking industry.

The airline industry literally took off. In 1925, the Kelly Act authorized the Post Office to contract out airmail delivery. In 1926, the Air Commerce Act authorized commercial airlines. From 1926 to 1929, the number of people flying in planes increased from 6,000 to 173,000. World War I had hastened the development of the airplane. Many returning veterans were pilots eager to show off their flying skills with nationwide "barnstorming."

The auto industry also greatly expanded due to Henry Ford's mastery of the assembly line. A Model T only cost $300. Also, more families could buy on credit. By the end of the decade, 23 million cars were registered. For the first time, women got behind the wheel.

The expansion of the auto industry created an economic benefit for all. Governments spent billions of dollars to build new roads, bridges, and traffic lights. Gas stations, motels, and restaurants sprang up to service drivers who now covered longer distances. The insurance industry added expensive protection for the vehicles and their owners. Banks also profited by lending to new car owners.

What Else Happened?

On January 16, 1920, the Volstead Act prohibited the sale, manufacture, or transport of any alcoholic beverages. That led to an underground economy dominated by gangsters like Chicago's Al Capone.

On August 18, 1920, women won the right to vote in America. That's when the states ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. That empowerment trickled down to many levels of society. So-called flappers cut their hair, dressed in less constrictive clothing, and became financially independent.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What investment decisions destabilized the economy during the 1920s?

How did the overproduction of goods in the 1920s affect consumer prices and the economy?

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The Economy in the 1920s and What Caused the Great Depression

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The 1920s is the decade when America's economy grew 42%. Mass production spread new consumer goods into every household. The modern auto and airline industries were born. The U.S. victory in World War I gave the country its first experience of being a global power.

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1920s Fashion: Style of the Roaring Twenties

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1920s fashion was the perfect blend between style and function. Beautiful clothes that allowed women to move.

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Flappers: The 'New Woman'

Perhaps the most familiar symbol of the "Roaring Twenties" is probably the flapper: a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said "unladylike" things, in addition to being more sexually "free" than previous generations. In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a fashionable flapper wardrobe), but even those women who were not flappers gained some unprecedented freedoms.

They could vote at last: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution had guaranteed that right in 1920, though it would be decades before Black women in the South could fully exercise their right to vote without Jim Crow segregation laws.

Millions of women worked in blue-collar jobs, as well as white-collar jobs (as stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy. The increased availability of birth-control devices such as the diaphragm made it possible for women to have fewer children.

In 1912, an estimated 16 percent of American households had electricity; by the mid-1920s, more than 60 percent did. And with this electrification came new machines and technologies like the washing machine, the freezer and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgeries of household work.

Did you know? Because the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act did not make it illegal to drink alcohol, only to manufacture and sell it, many people stockpiled liquor before the ban went into effect. Rumor had it that the Yale Club in New York City had a 14-year supply of booze in its basement.

Fashion, Fads and Film Stars

During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend-and spend it they did, on movies, fashion and consumer goods such as ready-to-wear clothing and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios.

The first commercial radio station in the United States, Pittsburgh's KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920. Two years later Warren G. Harding became the first president to address the nation by radio -and three years later there were more than 500 stations in the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households.

People also swarmed to see Hollywood movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week, and actors like Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Tallulah Bankhead became household names.

But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile. Low prices (the Ford Model T cost just $260 in 1924) and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were practically necessities.

By 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up to meet drivers' needs-as did the burgeoning oil industry.

The Jazz Age

Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted. (Some pundits called them "bedrooms on wheels.") What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, the black bottom and the flea hop were popular dances of the era.

Jazz bands played at venues like the Savoy and the Cotton Club in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music's "vulgarity" and "depravity" (and the "moral disasters" it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled the hedonism and excitement of the Jazz Age-Fitzgerald once claimed that the 1920s were "the most expensive orgy in history"-while other writers, artists, musicians and designers ushered in a new era of experimental Art Deco and modernist creativity.

Prohibition Era

During the 1920s, some freedoms were expanded while others were curtailed. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, had banned the manufacture and sale of "intoxicating liquors," and at 12 a.m. on January 16, 1920, the federal Volstead Act closed every tavern, bar and saloon in the United States. From then on, it was illegal to sell any "intoxication beverages" with more than 0.5 percent alcohol.

This drove the liquor trade underground-now, instead of ordinary bars, people simply went to nominally illegal speakeasies, where liquor was controlled by bootleggers, racketeers and other organized crime figures such as Chicago gangster Al Capone. (Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago's police force on his payroll.)

To many middle-class white Americans, Prohibition was a way to assert some control over the unruly immigrant masses who crowded the nation's cities. For instance, to the so-called "Drys," beer was known as "Kaiser brew." Drinking was a symbol of all they disliked about the modern city, and eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back the clock to an earlier and more comfortable time

Immigration and Racism in the 1920s

Prohibition was not the only source of social tension during the 1920s. An anti- Communist "Red Scare" in 1919 and 1920 encouraged a widespread nativist and anti-immigrant hysteria. This led to the passage of an extremely restrictive immigration law, the National Origins Act of 1924, which set immigration quotas that excluded some people (Eastern Europeans and Asians) in favor of others (Northern Europeans and people from Great Britain, for example).

Immigrants were hardly the only targets in this decade. The Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to Northern cities and the increasing visibility of Black culture-jazz and blues music, for example, and the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance-discomfited some white Americans. Millions of people, not just in the South but across the country, joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

By the middle of the decade, the KKK had two million members, many of whom believed the Klan represented a return to all the "values" that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties were trampling. More specifically, the 1920s represented economic and political uplift for Black Americans that threatened the social hierarchy of Jim Crow oppression.

Early Civil Rights Activism

During this decade, Black Americans sought stable employment, better living conditions and political participation. Many who migrated to the North found jobs in the automobile, steel, shipbuilding and meatpacking industries. But with more work came more exploitation.

In 1925, civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph founded the first predominantly Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to draw attention to the discriminatory hiring practices and working conditions for Blacks. And as housing demands increased for Black people in the North, so did discriminatory housing practices that led to a rise of urban ghettos, where Black Americans-excluded from white neighborhoods-were relegated to inadequate, overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions.

Black Americans battled for political and civil rights throughout the Roaring Twenties and beyond. The NAACP launched investigations into Black disenfranchisement in the 1920 presidential election, as well as surges of white mob violence, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

The NAACP also pushed for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, a law to make lynching a federal crime, but it was defeated by a Senate filibuster in 1922. A political milestone for Black Americans finally occurred when Oscar De Priest, a Chicago Republican, became the first Black congressman since Reconstruction to be elected to the House of Representatives in 1928.

The Roaring Twenties ushered in several demographic shifts, or what one historian called a "cultural Civil War" between city-dwellers and small-town residents, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and whites, "New Women" and advocates of old-fashioned family values.

But coming immediately after the hardships of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic, the Roaring Twenties also gave many middle-class Americans an unprecedented taste of freedom, unbridled fun and upward economic mobility unsurpassed in U.S. history.

Sources

What Caused the Roaring Twenties? Not the End of a Pandemic (Probably). Smithsonian Magazine.
The Roaring Twenties. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The Roaring 20s. PBS: American Experience.

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Roaring Twenties: Flappers, Prohibition & Jazz Age - HISTORY

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The Roaring Twenties were a Jazz Age burst of prosperity and freedom for flappers and others during the Prohibition era, until the economy crashed in 1929.

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Biography

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American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) rose to prominence as a chronicler of the jazz age. Born in St. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton University to join the U.S. Army. The success of his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), made him an instant celebrity. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender is the Night (1934) was considered a disappointment.

Struggling with alcoholism and his wife's mental illness, Fitzgerald attempted to reinvent himself as a screenwriter. He died before completing his final novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), but earned posthumous acclaim as one of America's most celebrated writers.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald had the good fortune-and the misfortune-to be a writer who summed up an era. The son of an alcoholic failure from Maryland and an adoring, intensely ambitious mother, he grew up acutely conscious of wealth and privilege-and of his family's exclusion from the social elite. After entering Princeton in 1913, he became a close friend of Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. He spent most of his time writing lyrics for Triangle Club theatrical productions and analyzing how to triumph over the school's intricate social rituals.

He left Princeton without graduating and used it as the setting for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920). It was perfect literary timing. The twenties were beginning to roar, bathtub gin and flaming youth were on everyone's lips, and the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal spokesman for the decade.

With his stunning southern wife, Zelda, he headed for Paris and a mythic career of drinking from hip flasks, dancing until dawn, and jumping into outdoor fountains to end the party. Behind this façade was a writer struggling to make enough money to match his extravagant lifestyle and still produce serious work. His second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned (1922), which recounted an artist's losing fight with dissipation, was flawed. His next, The Great Gatsby (1925), the story of a gangster's pursuit of an unattainable lost love, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds' frenetic ascent to literary fame was soon tinged with tragedy. Scott became an alcoholic and Zelda, jealous of his fame (or in some versions, thwarted by it), collapsed into madness. They crept home in 1931 to an America in the grip of the Great Depression -a land no longer interested in flaming youth except to pillory them for their excesses.

The novel with which he had grappled for years, Tender Is the Night, about a psychiatrist destroyed by his wealthy wife, was published in 1934 to lukewarm reviews and poor sales. Fitzgerald retreated to Hollywood. He made a precarious living as a scriptwriter and struggled to control his alcoholism. Miraculously he found the energy to begin another novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), about a complex gifted movie producer. He had finished about a third of it when he died of a heart attack. Obituaries generally dismissed him.

Not until the early 1950s did interest in Fitzgerald revive, and when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry. A closer look at his life and career reveals a writer with an acute sense of history, an intellectual pessimist who doubts Americans' ability to survive their infatuation with material success.

At the same time, he conveyed in his best novels and short stories the sense of youthful awe and hope America's promises created in many people. Few historians have matched the closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the narrator reflects on how the land must have struck Dutch sailors' eyes 300 years earlier: "For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity to wonder."

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F. Scott Fitzgerald - Books, Biography & Zelda

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F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American writer, whose books helped defined the Jazz Age. He is best known for his novel "The Great Gatsby" (1925), considered a masterpiece. He was married to socialite Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948).