1929

Middletown: A Study in American Culture by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd was published, examining the tastes in homes, clothing, and automobiles of the citizens of Muncie, Indiana.

Construction on the Empire State Building began.

Construction began on the modernist McGraw-Hill building, designed by Raymond Hood.

The Metropolis of Tomorrow by Hugh Ferriss was published.

Popular movies included The Taming of the Shrew starring Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, The Love Parade starring Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier, Hallelujah directed by King Vidor, The Broadway Melody starring Charles King and Bessie Love, Steamboat Willy produced by Walt Disney and starring Mickey Mouse, In Old Arizona starring Warner Baxter and Coquette starring Mary Pickford.

Popular fiction and verse included Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel, William Faulkner’s Satoris and The Sound and the Fury, Sinclair Lewis’s Dodsworth, Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, Theodore Dreiser’s A Galley of Women, Ring W. Lardner’s Round Up, John Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold, Edith Wharton’s Hudson River Bracketed, Chic Sale’s The Specialist, Oliver LaFarge’s Laughing Boy, Lloyd C. Douglas’s The Magnificent Obsession, S.S. Van Dine’s The Bishop Murder Case, Robinson Jeffers’s Dear Judas, Conrad Aiken’s Selected Poems, Louise Bogan’s Dark Summer, Countee Cullen’s The Black Christ and E.A. Robinson’s Cavender’s House.

Popular songs included Nick Lucas’s “Tiptoe Through The Tulips With Me,” Cliff Edwards, The Rounders & The Bronx Sisters’s “Singin’ in the Rain,” Ethel Waters’s “Am I Blue?” Rudy Vallee’s “I’m Just a Vagabond Lover,” Lillian Taiz & John Hundley’s “With a Song in My Heart,” Louis Armstrong’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” William Glaxton & Genevieve Tobin’s “You Do Something to Me,” Ruth Etting’s “Button Up Your Overcoat,” Lilly Holman’s “Moanin’ Low,” Helen Morgan’s “Why Was I born?” Al Jolson’s “Liza,” and Charles King’s “Broadway Melody.”

Edward Hopper painted The Lighthouse at Two Lights.

Charles Shuler painted Upper Deck.

Thomas Hart Benton painted Georgia Cotton Pickers.

Isamu Noguchi sculpted Martha Graham.

According to a Woman’s Bureau study of 169,255 working women showed that 46% were married.

Women at Goucher College were permitted to smoke.

The New York City Board of Education announced that the word Negro should be spelled with a capital N.

February:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its Contemporary Decorative Arts Show.

March:  In Elizabethton, Tennessee, five hundred women began to strike.

July 2:  Showgirl opened with songs by George and Ira Gershwin starring Ruby Keeler and Jimmy Durante.

September 3:  The bull market peaked.

October 29:  Black Tuesday, the stock market crashed.  New York City mayor Jimmy Walker announced that movie houses show cheerful pictures.

November 13:  The stock market hit bottom.  Unemployment rose from 700,000 to 3.1 million.

November 27:  Fifty Million Frenchmen opened with songs by Cole Porter.