Finally! It’s taken me WEEKS of constant searching to find copies of the “New York Amsterdam News” to scale down for Claudie! With the doll’s release one day away, I finally have my 18″-doll-sized versions of the one and only Harlem newspaper available in the 1920s. (And this is the very newspaper that Claudie’s mother is a reporter for in Book One.)
One of the most famous off-Broadway theatres in Harlem in the 1920s was the “Lafayette” on 132nd Street and 7th Avenue in New York City, which attracted both black and white audiences with its sophisticated productions. The New York Amsterdam News was Harlem’s one and only newspaper, published weekly, owned and operated by and for black people. Claudie Wells would have been familiar with both.
Our own Nautilus was pretty excited to model the newspapers for us (she’s a TM #77 with a non-AG wig), especially since she got to wear Kit’s Play Dress for the photo shoot.
The four-page-plus-insert newspaper features six of the original twelve pages from the May 9, 1923, issue of the New York Amsterdam News. (It even contains a large Furniture Store ad with the popular King Tut theme: “Discovered! A Treasure of Furniture Values at Our Stores!”) Its insert is a copy of pages 5-6 from the same issue, with the usual heading of “Theatres and Other Amusements”. The other six pieces are two-sided replicas of the weekly Theatre news found on page 5 (backed by the original Page 6), all dated 1923. The pages measure approximately 3-1/2 x 4″ (similar to Nanea’s WWII newspaper size). It was a fun research project, like the 1920s King Tut papers we did earlier, and we’re already planning to do the same for other newspapers and events through the last 200 years! Cut, fold, glue. Cut, fold, glue. Now, if I could only teach the dolls to make their own . . .
Click on any image to enlarge.
If your Claudie wants her own copies of these newspapers or The Brownies’ Book, they’re now available in the Islandshire Etsy store (tab at top of page).