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| Arts and Architecture Skyscrapers like the New York Life and Chrysler buildings soared, while Frank Lloyd Wright fitted his structures naturally into their landscapes. The rounded Art Deco style began with the International Art Exposition in Paris in 1925. At the time, it was called Modern. In the first talking moving picture, John Barrymore played Don Juan. The first Oscars were awarded in 1927, and the Best Picture was Paramount’s Wings. |
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| Radio and Flight Radio was the latest technology. NBC and CBS began broadcasting programs featuring news, advertising, and entertainment, including classical music, jazz, and such popular sentimental ballads as “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time.” Charles Lindbergh made the first transatlantic flight. Business people flew from coast to coast on a regular schedule. Even the U. S. Mail took to the air. |
| Music and Literature Twenty-four-year-old George Gershwin had won a reputation as a serious composer with the jazzy Rhapsody in Blue and was working on An American in Paris, inspired by the Lost Generation of expatriate artists and writers who lived and wrote in Paris between the wars. Rebelling against Victorian mores, disillusioned by the “war to end all wars,” they wrote frankly about sex and changed the face of American culture. Jazz and blues streamed from New York’s Cotton Club, as well as from clubs in “that toddling town,” Chicago, and “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.” |
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| The 19th amendment extended democracy by enfranchising the majority of Americans. |
| Two amendments to the U.S. Constitution brought major changes. The 18th amendment prohibited the production and sale of alcoholic beverages. It failed to bring the anticipated reforms, leading instead to increased crime. |
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| All that movement was sparked by the automobile industry, which boomed in the 1920's. Henry Ford used assembly lines to produce the Model T, which fell in cost from $850 in 1908 to $290 in 1925. |
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| America in the 1920's was on the move--from the country to the city, from an agrarian to an industrial economy, from handcrafts to mass production. |
| Buddy Rogers and Clara Bow in Wings |
| Chrysler Building |
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| Billie Silvey |
| The Roaring 20's |
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| In the 1920’s, when our house was being built, architecture wasn’t the only area experiencing revolutionary change. It was the period after World War I and before the Great Depression, and the whole country was casting off its inhibitions. Women had won the right to vote--and to shorten their skirts, smoke cigarettes, and dance the Charleston. It was the era of Prohibition, bootleg whiskey, speakeasies and gangsters. |
| George Gershwin |
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| Henry Ford, Model T |
| assembly line |
| November 2005 |