NEW YORKER Ads, 1930

 A return to the pages of the New Yorker for a good dose of Tudor Cityana. These are advertisements which ran in the summer of 1930, rendered in a way that only the magazine's readership can appreciate.

June 21, 1930

LET BROOKLYN AND THE BRONX WEEP

Where man conquered is he destroyed. Glorious wheels, space-annihilating as the sandals of Mercury, have betrayed him. . . have delivered him into the hands of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. . . Let the Boroughs lament. Let Brooklyn and the Bronx weep. Let Manhattan and Queens gnash their teeth. But let them not utterly despair. For there remains as a refuge from all the ills of subway traveling, the pleasant pastures of Tudor City.   

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July 5. 1930

SUBWAY FLOWERS

There is beauty everywhere. The little pot of flowers in the window of a filthy tenement. Sunlight reflected in a puddle. Surely in the subway this beauty is found in the wonderful resignation which dwells in the faces of nearly all subway travelers. Their time is wasted; their vitality is destroyed; they are hot, uncomfortable and crowded. Yet with what beautiful meekness they bear their lot. Only the rebels, the malcontents, the discontented, the disaffected ‒ call them what you will, we admit it ‒ come to Tudor City.

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July 19. 1930

YOURS FOR FEWER FEET

Before cobblers went in for orthopedics and became big boot and shoe men, there used to be an affinity, often remarked, between cobbling and atheism. It was no coincidence. Humanity shows at its worst about the feet. Too many feet seen concurrently are destructive of faith in God and man alike ‒ another reason why subway traveling is so sapping to the morale. And have you noticed that in the subway for every head there are two feet ‒ and it's the feet they use? Come, oh come, to Tudor City where feet are fewer and walked with, not thought with.     

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August 9, 1930

MIRACLES ‒ INTERBOROUGH AND OTHERWISE

The only kind of Rapid Transit known to our remote ancestors was operated by the hand of God. It took the form of direct ascent into heaven without the preliminary dying ‒ pleasant for the chosen and economical for the heirs. In these degenerate days Rapid Transit has fallen on evil times ‒ become merely Interborough. Subway travelers, however, can still savor the joy of a real miracle by rising out of the depths and coming heavenward, Tudor Cityward. But they must make the ascent on their own. For believe it or not, it is the hand of the photographer and not the Almighty uplifting the little group above.  

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August 23, 1930

GENTLEMEN GOING TO BUSINESS

NEW YORK, 1930

With all due deference to Knox, Stetson, Truly Warner, et al, it's not the hat that matters but what's under it. And we put it to you plainly and straightforwardly: exactly what is under the hat of a man who, when he could live peacefully in Tudor City, prefers to throw himself twice a day into the greatest crush since the invention of the sardine. Ten seconds impartial thought, please. . . No, five are enough!   

For more about the New Yorker and Tudor City, see here.