1909
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hudson Fulton Exhibition of American
furniture opened.
The World’s Tallest Building until 1913 (42-stories), the Metropolitan Life
Insurance Tower, was completed in New York City by Napoleon Le Brun and Sons.
Frank Lloyd Wright completed the Frederick G. Robie House, as well as the
furniture, in Chicago and moved to Paris in the same year.
Gene Autier wrote and starred in the film The Girl Spy.
Hiawatha was produced by Carl Laemmle’s Independent Moving Picture Company.
Gertrude Stein published Three Lives.
“That Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune” and “Yiddle on Your Fiddle, Play Some
Ragtime” music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, were popular songs.
Collections of modernist poetry by Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams
were published, respectively.
The first blues song to be written down was W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues..
Eleven states required automobile licenses.
Bakelite plastic was introduced.
The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition opened in Seattle, Washington.
Standard Oil's John D. Rockefeller was the world's first billionaire.
June 22: The first transcontinental car
race was won by a Model T Ford.
January 19: Eugene Walter’s The Easiest
Way, a play, opened in New York.
March 7: Arbor Day was designated to honor
Luther Burbank in California.
June 9: The first woman to drive cross-country,
Alice Huyler Ramsey, began her voyage.
August 2: The Lincoln penny replaced the
50-year-old Indian head penny.
September 27: Three million acres in the
west was set aside for National Park land.
October: The American Ladies Tailors Association
promoted their “suffragette suit” in New York.
October 28: The Cort Theater, which sat
900, opened in Chicago.
November 1: Sergey Rachmaninoff made his
American debut at Smith College.
November 24: The “Uprising of Thirty Thousand,”
a garment worker’s strike, broke out in New York City.
December 29: The first known “goddamn”
was uttered in a performance of Clyde Fitch’s play The City.