Lincoln’s Birthday at the Aeolian Stores
One hundred years ago today … New Yorkers celebrated the birthday of the sixteenth US president with sales. Lincoln’s birthday is February 12th, but the sales lasted all weekend.
Maybe they wanted a new phonograph on which to listen to the song of the moment, “Dardanella” by Ben Selvin’s orchestra, the 1919 recording which hit #1 on the charts on January 1, 1920, and stayed there 24 weeks. (Listen to it here.)
Or maybe they wanted a new piano, pianola, or player piano, or a used one. They could trade in their old instrument for a new one, or old phonograph, buy going to one of four local stores run by the Aeolian Company, a respected manufacturer of musical equipment: 29 West 42nd Street, Manhattan; 367 East 149th Street, Bronx; 11 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn; and across the Hudson at 895 Broad Street.
The Aeolian Company is described by the online RadioMuseum.org:
Founded in 1887 by William Tremaine [...] The Company manufactured musical instruments included the Aeolian and the Orchestrelle - roll-operated reed organs, the Pianola, the Pianola Piano, the Aeolian Pipe Organ, the Aeolian Vocalion - an acoustic gramophone with a cable-controlled volume control, Vocalion gramophone records, the Duo-Art reproducing piano, and standard pianos and reed organs as well as millions of music rolls needed to feed the fashionable instruments.
Or maybe, on Lincoln’s birthday, New Yorkers just went for the free trousers.
The New York Times, Feb. 11, p. 16. Newspapers.com.
The Evening World, Feb. 10, p. 11. Newspapers.com
The Aeolian Company Store. Courtesy Museum of the City of New York.
The Evening World, Feb. 10, p. 19. Newspapers.com.