Columbus New Year 1922: Weather, calendar dampened celebration
The new year of 1922 came to Columbus a bit on the quiet side.
Part of the reason for the diminished welcome was due to the weather. A relatively pleasantly cold day on December 31, 1921, turned into a very cold day with temperatures dropping to 12 degrees in the city. This was accompanied by light snow and flurries in downtown Columbus but with more than 2 inches of snow in nearby suburbs such as Grandview Heights.
Further complicating celebrations, New Years Day fell on a Sunday, prompting Monday, Jan. 2 to be a legal holiday for most government workers and for a number of private employers as well.
While local churches were more easily filled for Watch Night services on New Year’s Eve, many other residents with fireworks in hand were unsure as to which night to set them off. To that end, a bit of celebrating was at hand on both nights.
A local paper summed up the celebration: “New-year’s day came into Columbus Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, with some of the gay old boy’s verve and zest gone, with his hat on straighter and fewer flowers and confetti in his figurative arms.
“The extra added attraction of a Monday holiday therefore seemed hardly necessary for the recuperation of those who met the newcomer. But there has to be an official holiday on a working day when work is called off, or employees of the city, county and state as well as of banks and many stores and business houses would feel lighted. Hence, Monday, and no one is complaining at the doubleheader.”
There had been festive celebrations across the city on New Year’s Eve in private homes and in local restaurants, theaters and hotels. Probably the most elaborate of these was the conclusion of the annual Yuletide Festival held at Memorial Hall on East Broad Street by the Columbus Woman’s Club.
The same local paper described the festivities: “Mrs. Gerry Cathcart, general chairman, said that the club will make its last evening the most spectacular of any ever held in Columbus by an organization of women. ‘Merrymakers will have the opportunity for more fun and more surprises than they ever had,’ said Mrs. Cathcart. ‘The fortune tellers will be in their booth on your right as you enter the hall, and they will give astonishing facts in the lives of the seekers of knowledge.
‘The dancing, bargaining at the various booths and the music will be at their height and everybody is welcome to come and enjoy them.’”
And this was not all of the activity at the spacious Memorial Hall on New Year’s Eve. A newspaper reported that “Thirty-five newly naturalized citizens of Columbus will be the guests at a chicken supper to be tendered by the Columbus Americanization Society Saturday evening at Memorial Hall.”
As the new year of 1922 began there was more than usual activity across American society. Warren G. Harding, the proprietor of The Marion Star and a U.S. Senator, had been elected president in 1920 promising a return to “normalcy.”
Normalcy was returning following the upheavals of the Progressive Era from 1900 to 1918 and the end of World War I. Now in 1922, the economy was booming, the stock market was advancing and an optimism about the future was in the air. With the prohibition of alcohol production in place, America was entering a period that would soon be called the “Roaring Twenties.”
Reflecting that optimism, President Harding revived a tradition that his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, had set aside, and reinstituted receiving any guest who wanted to stop by the White House on New Year’s Day. After dignitaries had stopped by, any citizen who wished could stop by and say hello to the President.
Unlike the security precautions in place today, the public stopped by in large numbers and the President, his wife and cabinet members shook hands and greeted guests for five consecutive hours. It seems a good time was had by all.
Life was busy in Columbus on the Monday after New Year’s Day as well. An observer summed up that “The program for the day in brief, Eddie O’Dowd will take on Patsy Flanagan in a 12 round, referee’s decision bout at the Chamber of Commerce at 3 PM and at 7 o’clock city council will take on three new members.” (The Chamber of Commerce auditorium, holding up to 3,000 viewers on plank seats, stood Downtown until 1969 where the Rhodes Tower is today.)
The Ringside tavern across the alley remembers those days. In a letter to the editor, W C Chipps made his plea for 1922. “Especially to the youth: teach the young girl to be a womanly girl with not too many frizzes and frills. And to the boy to be a manly boy – be polite and courteous and cast aside the cigaret and the swear word, both very common these days. Their use will surely not get you anywhere.”
Happy New Year!
Local historian and author Ed Lentz writes the As It Were column for ThisWeek Community News and The Dispatch.
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