Coney Island, a three-mile peninsula off Brooklyn, NY, has always been both famous and infamous — which accounts for its early nickname “Sodom by the Sea.” Until the turn of the century, Coney Island was an island. In the early 20th century, thanks to a great deal of landfill, it became "attached." The peninsula comprises […]

May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month — a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States — which led me to wonder if there were any Asian flappers. China also experienced their version of the Roaring 20s in Shanghai. Because of the opening of trade in the 1920s, there were many Western influences […]

In the Fall of 1920, local Atlantic City, NJ business owners devised a scheme to extend the tourist season into September. They planned to stage an "inter-city" beauty contest where local newspapers would select contestants and pay for their wardrobe. The Atlantic City Businessmen's League would pay for their travel to the contest. Newspapers in […]

Just like chop suey, Mah Jong has its roots in China but was adopted in a modified form in the US. The game originated in and around Shanghai in the mid to late 1800s (there is some debate when it exactly began, where, and by whom), but had its US introduction in the mid-1920s through […]

Once upon a time, there was a group of hunters who met regularly at the Westminster Hotel at Irving Place and 16th Street in Manhattan. The men, perhaps after an evening of drinking, decided to create a kennel club — an organization for canine affairs that concerns itself with the breeding, showing and promotion of […]

When I say “TV series set in the 1920s,” what comes to mind? Most people would immediately respond Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey. Some might add Peaky Blinders. As a mystery writer, my list is a little different: Murdoch Mysteries, Miss Fisher Mysteries, and Frankie Drake Mysteries The Roaring Twenties, aka the Jazz Age, were […]

A Belgian detective, a soldier recovering from duty on the Western front, and a Scotland Yard detective walk into a country manor . . . It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the beginning of an Agatha Christie mystery. It is, in fact, Christie’s first mystery, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written during World War […]

During the 1920s motion pictures played a huge role in social life for people of all ages but especially those in their teens and early twenties. The first public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but it would be decades before sound motion pictures were made commercially practical. Reliable synchronization, […]