Page 80 – LIFE

New Yorkers Beat the Heat in the Sizzling Summer of ’53

December 15, 2019August 1, 2016 by

The summer of 1953 in New York City was torturous. The temperature was in the 90s (or higher) every day between July 15 and 21, and again between Aug. 24 and Sept. 4 a record-setting 12 days in a row. And that’s not even accounting for other 90-plus days in between.

Keep in mind that air-conditioning was far from widespread. Though the technology has been around since the early 20th century, it was then used primarily in movie theaters and other public spaces.

That meant that, as these Peter Stackpole images show, New Yorkers had to resort to some other, time-tested means of staying cool during those long days of oppressive heat. It meant keeping windows wide open, jumping in the water, keeping a steady supply of icy-cold treats available and of course relying on that most recognizable method of urban cooling: the fire hydrant. When opened, those gushers turn into a city kid’s sprinkler.

Except, of course, that it’s illegal to open a fire hydrant on your own. Today’s city residents can find relief just like their forebears, however: the Fire Department allows citizens to request to have hydrants opened with a proper sprinkler cap, which means residents can cool down without wasting extra water.

New York City heat wave, 1953.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

See Unpublished Protest Photos From the 1968 Democratic Convention

October 19, 2020July 21, 2016 by

The Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 was so tumultuous that it might have been better described, as LIFE Magazine put it the following week, as the Democratic Convulsion.

That week, LIFE devoted more than a dozen pages to the events in Chicago, but the photographs of the protests that made it to print represented just a fraction of those captured that week. This gallery presents some of the unpublished outtakes from that story.

“No political event since 1860 has mirrored the harsh specifics of national tribulation as dramatically as last week’s Democratic convention in Chicago,” the magazine’s main convention story, by Paul O’Neil, began. The convention, he wrote, was “the kind of turbulent response to national difficulty the citizenry expected in 1968, but it made obeisance, in the end, to the very bombers and the very nightsticks which had been so symptomatic of the country dilemmas all along.”

The convention would go down in history for the harsh battles in the street between police officers and protesters “The police behaved, even to the ordinary citizen, as though they had finally been granted license, long desired, to run the city their way,” LIFE noted and for the selection of Hubert H. Humphrey as nominee despite major divisions in the party after incumbent president Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to run again, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the success of the peace-focused campaign of Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

At the point at which LIFE examined the events, with the distance of only one week, one question emerged: Would the 1968 drama herald the end of the party? As the Democrats met virtually this summer to officially select Joe Biden as the party’s nominee for president, it’s abundantly clear that the answer was no.

Protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, August 1968.

Charles Phillips / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, August 1968.

Charles Phillips The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, August 1968.

Charles Phillips / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, August 1968.

Lee Balterman / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, July 1968.

Lee Balterman / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, July 1968.

Charles Phillips / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

See the Colorful Political Convention Outfits of the 1960s

November 6, 2020July 18, 2016 by

The best-known reason for a delegate to go to a political party convention is to have a say in the official selection of a nominee for president.

But a party convention is also a time to see and be seen, in quirky clothes (and hats many, many hats) that reveal the wearer’s political leanings. And that tradition is nothing new.

Hats are part of a long tradition in American electoral politics, going all the way back to the headgear worn by members of political clubs in the 1800s. Over the years, as political buttons and pins became more common, those hats became a natural place for convention attendees to declare their loyalties with a bit of extra flair. The more such hats and other accoutrements became a dependable way to get attention among the crowds, the more they veered away from staid boaters and into outlandish territory.

So here’s a look back at some of the most colorful clothes from LIFE Magazine’s coverage of the political conventions of the 1960s. From “Kennedy Cuties” in matching striped dresses to a go-go dancer with a Nixon hat, these convention-goers weren’t afraid to wear their political hearts on their sleeves.

Female supporters of Democratic Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, called “Kennedy Cuties” form a conga line at the airport while awaiting their candidate’s arrival for the Democratic National Convention, 1960.

Hank Walker / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1964.

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Democratic National Convention, 1964.

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Democratic National Convention, 1964.

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1964.

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Democratic National Convention, 1964.

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1964.

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Democratic National Convention, 1968.

Lee Balterman / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1968.

Arthur Schatz / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1968.

Grey Villet / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1968.

Lynn Pelham / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Democratic National Convention, 1968.

Ralph Crane / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1968.

Grey Villet / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Democratic National Convention, 1968.

Ralph Crane / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1968.

Lynn Pelham / The LIFE Picture Collection

Rockefeller supporter at the Republican National Convention, 1968.

Grey Villet / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Republican National Convention, 1968.

Lynn Pelham / The LIFE Picture Collection

Richard Nixon supporters at the Republican National Convention, 1968.

Lynn Pelham / The LIFE Picture Collection

Richard Nixon supporters at the Republican National Convention, 1968.

Ralph Crane / The LIFE Picture Collection

Stunning Photographs of Islands That Inspired Great Works of Art

November 17, 2019July 7, 2016 by

The islands of Polynesia have long been a source of inspiration to visitors. Perhaps most famous is painter Paul Gauguin, but literary icons like Herman Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson also found something special in the islands’ unique environment and culture.

It was with that knowledge in mind that LIFE photographer Eliot Elisofon set out for Polynesia. Along with his wife, he traveled thousands of miles around the region, hoping to provide LIFE readers with a hint of what made the place such a rich wellspring of art. The result was a Jan. 24, 1955, photo essay titled, simply, Voyages to Paradise.

Elisofon’s work gives new meaning to the idea of “vacation reading,” with each photograph paired with a passage from a work of literature inspired by the islands.

In the dancers seen in the first slide below, for example, Elisofon saw as a picture of those whom Melville lauded in Typee, writing “not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes, seem to dance in their leads.” The ship seen in the fifth slide was described by Frederick O’Brien in Atolls of the Sun. And the aerial view of Bora Bora seen in slide three was just as James A. Michener had described it in Return to Paradise: “I saw it first from an airplane. On the horizon there was a speck that became a tall, blunt mountain with cliffs dropping sheer into the sea. About the base of the mountain, narrow fingers of land shot out, forming magnificent bays, while about the whole was thrown a coral ring of absolute perfection, dotted with small motus on which palms grew…”

Not every photograph Elisofon took made it into print, so we can’t say whether there are particular literary scenes with which he associated the outtakes. And yet we know for sure that these islands can inspire greatness. Perhaps the images in these unmatched photos will someday inspire works of art of their own.

Girls in frangipani blossoms swirling in a frenzied dance.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An old couple resting in Takaroa.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An airborne view of Bora Bora.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A resident of Apia amiably matching a literary portrait.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

County of Roxbough on Takaroa reef.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A girl in Tahiti, bathing, 1955.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children in Tahiti.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A fisherman looking out at the sea.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Playing the ukulele in Tahiti

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man in Tahiti.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The sacred grounds of the Typee valley.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The South Seas

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Tahitian woman walking her horse through the jungle.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sunset over the South Seas

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fiery greeting for canoes in Tahiti.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A view from the beach on a Samoan evening.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

When River Tubing Was A New American Pastime

December 14, 2019July 1, 2016 by

On the Fourth of July weekend, Americans all over will celebrate with parades, barbecues and pool parties. But, for those looking for a more unusual way to do something festive on a summer weekend, perhaps inspiration can be found in this photo essay by Alfred Eisenstaedt, which ran in the July 21,1941, issue of LIFE Magazine.

That summer, on a Sunday right around Independence Day, the photographer traveled to Somerset, Wis., where a man named David Breault, owner of the Terrance Nite Club, had turned the nearby Apple River into a gold mine.

On that day, about 200 people had been supplied with inner tubes, on which they floated down the river, drinking beer and, when the current allowed, finding time to steal a kiss. After about 45 minutes, they came to a stopping point, where a Terrance Night Club truck would pick them up and bring them back to the starting point. If they wanted to go again, they could. The club provided the tubes for free, but it was worth the expense: Breault reported to LIFE that his business had multiplied by three since they began doing so.

Though the activity might not seem so unusual to today’s summer celebrants—the “floating party” was essentially a lazy-river amusement park ride created by nature—it’s noteworthy that LIFE’s write-up of the activity expressed surprise and delight at the idea that Breault had “innovated the unique pastime of mass inner-tube floating.”

It wasn’t until 1966 that TIME credited Thailand’s Princess Chumbhot of Nagar Svarga as “inventor of the sport of tubing.” Sports Illustrated, the year before, had provided a little more detail on how it had happened: the princess had brought about 100 tubes to her country estate and invited her friends to join her in riding them down a river, but “when news of the fun got out in a Siamese TV show, people began flocking to southern Nakhon Nay province by the hundreds, hoping to join in.”

Though the princess may well have given inner-tubing international renown as a sport, she must share some credit with David Breault of Wisconsin, an American tubbing pioneer. As these photos make clear, there’s room enough at the party for everyone.

Toward the end of the two-mile stretch, drifters became jammed up, snagged on reeds, and slipped off tubes.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A floating party on the Apple River in Somerset, Wisconsin in 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Floaters made their way to the river, passing by the circular building at the left, which was an outdoor bar built around a tree.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The floaters walked down two long, steep wooden staircases to the river.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Inexperienced at steering and stopping, couples often got separated and ended up floating beside new acquaintances.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A floating party on the Apple River in Somerset, Wisconsin in 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Beer-drinking was the most popular pastime of Apple River’s inner-tube floaters, such as Mr. and Mrs. Bud Klingen of Minneapolis who shared a bottle.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Some took photos despite the risk of getting their camera wet.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Music on the water.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Playing bridge, drifting down the river.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This pair went aground on a sand bar but didn’t seem to mind.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the end of the run, William J. Braun of St. Paul, Minn. hauled himself out of the water using a rope that spanned the river.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Floaters were taken back to the club by truck, many wanting to go again.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Back on dry land

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The World of a 13-year-old in New York City, 1972

December 15, 2019June 28, 2016 by

In 1972 LIFE and photographer Bill Ray zoomed in on the life of a New York City 13-year-old named Brian Sullivan.

“If you’re not one, being a city kid can sound like an awful drag,” the magazine noted. “You haven’t got a backyard to fool around in, and since you live in an apartment house the neighbors are likely to complain about any noise you make. A gang may swoop down and steal the city boy’s bike, or grab his bus pass while he’s at the penny arcade, or beat him up while he’s just waiting at the corner for a friend.”

But Ray discovered that Brian had plenty to do.

The story shows how New York City was in many ways rougher than it is today: Brian had been mugged once, and though his parents let him take the subway alone, they told him to avoid certain streets. But the city was in certain ways also more carefree. Brian’s hobbies included shooting off homemade rockets in Central Park, and playing in a junk yard with his friends. (Not everything was innocent: Brian also threw things off the roof of his building.) Brian and his pals roamed the city, unencumbered by social media or cell phones, and in the evenings he played cards with his family.

There was certainly a level of danger for a kid in the city then, and a level of fun and possibility, too.

“Playing round in the city is fun,” Brian Sullivan told LIFE assistant editor Anne Holister, “and scary sometimes too. One of us hides in these rocks in Central Park and the others find him. Then we slide down the slope. Some kids fell off it 20 years ago and got killed.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan in the park with friends.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sullivan described the moment: “I launched the rocket and it went out of sight. Then it blew up. The body tube and the fins were floating down, and i climbed up on the fence to see where they would land, but I lost them. I was a little upset. The rocket cost me $1.50. One thing I don’t like about shooting off rockets in the park is that everybody comes round to watch, steps on your foot.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“Joann, John, Robert, Dad and I play rummy every night after dinner,” Sullivan said. “It’s better than TV. Dad usually wins.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan on the streets of New York City.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan learned to type at school.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan with his Siamese cat at home in the kitchen.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“My brother John and I—he’s 25—take a lot of walks. This one was down 42nd Street. I can’t go there by myself, and don’t want to,” Sullivan said.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“This guy was right out front of the Metropolitan Museum, spouting things from the Bible,” Sullivan said. “He’s been around for years. We kept saying `What are you doing, what’s all this, what are you, a nut or something?’ and he didn’t even care.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“I call this the knight room,” Sullivan said. “It’s at the Metropolitan. All the armor, the weapons, it’s really fascinating. My friend Trevor Johnston and I had a pretend sword fight with a couple of pieces of paper. Some day I’ll take up fencing.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan at the Museum of Modern Art.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“Dad took me to the firehouse where he used to be chief,” Sullivan said. “I talked with the men and they let me use the hose. I almost broke a car window with the spray. I think you’d go right up in the air if you held that hose alone.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian at the firehouse.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan in New York City.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“We go on top of our building and throw pebbles down onto the grass,” Sullivan said. “We get chased a lot. Water bombs are better than pebbles because they make a nice big splash.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“I love hockey, there’s so much action,” Sullivan said. “Here we’re playing on skates in the playground. I was goalie, guarding a park bench goal. I’m second from right in this picture.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan rode bikes with friends in Central Park.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan with his friends in Central Park.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

More Like This

history

New Yorkers Beat the Heat in the Sizzling Summer of ’53

See Unpublished Protest Photos From the 1968 Democratic Convention

See the Colorful Political Convention Outfits of the 1960s

Stunning Photographs of Islands That Inspired Great Works of Art

When River Tubing Was A New American Pastime

The World of a 13-year-old in New York City, 1972

Jerrie Cobb Had the “Right Stuff,” But at the Wrong Time

A Wild Way to Move a House

Route 66: An Invitation To Roam, and To Dream

The Social Lives of College Girls, 1945

Different Times: The Shah of Iran On Vacation in Miami, 1955

Dior Takes Moscow, 1959

More Like This

Subscribe to the LIFE Newsletter