About Jazz-Age Boston

Directly contradicting the title, this blog isn't just going to be about Boston in the 1920s and 30s. If you just started reading this blog (which is a given, since this is the first post), please know that I've started off our relationship by lying to you. Let's start over.

My name is Aaron M. Dougherty, and Jazz-Age Boston is a product of historical research I'm doing on the world of 100 years ago. In 1914, the first World War started in Europe. In the United States, automobile magnate Henry Ford was paying his workers a five-dollar a day wage, an unheard-of sum for blue-collar Americans. The era was marked by increased industrialization, globalization, and other trends that still echo today.

And now a few points about subject matter...

Point 1: When I write about the "Jazz Age," I cover a lot more chronology than just the narrow, ten year period of the 1920s. Things that happened in the twenties were influenced by things that happened during the previous decade, and in turn influenced the decade following. Prepare to jump around a lot.

Point 2: Just like today, Boston in the twenties did not exist in a bubble. People came and went, lived and died. I'm going to talk about events outside the city, in Massachusetts, in greater New England, in the rest of the country and probably even outside of it. It's very stream-of-consciousness.

Why Boston? And why this particular period in its history? Part of it is because I live here, and 1914 was a momentous year all across the globe. Another part is because I think that every particular place and time ought to have its moment in the sun, that there's not a single piece of the human experience that's without importance.

Specifically, as one of the great American cities,  Boston experienced early 20th century American anxieties about immigration, industrialization, and modernity. As much as the city is known for its role in the American Revolution, its universities and its art and cultural scene, it was also a notorious haven for rum-runners during Prohibition, and it was here that Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed despite hazy evidence and international protest. Beantown has had its share of both highs and lows, and you'll uncover quite a few surprises if you look back more or less a century ago.

A quick note on sources; I'm used to citing them for my research. This blog isn't quite the same thing as a graduate thesis, but I will try to make my sources available for interested readers. I'll also attempt to make sure that images and pictures on this site are in the public domain, while posting links to relevant copyrighted images.