Who Killed Men's Hats?

by Robert Krulwich

(NPR)  A hundred years ago — and that's when this picture was taken, in 1912 — men didn't leave home without a hat. Boys wore caps. This is a socialist political rally in Union Square in Manhattan. There may be a bare head or two in this crowd, but I think those heads are women's. 

The Library of Congress/via flickr

Here's another rally, Union Square again. This time it's an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. A hundred years have passed. Same place. Same kind of crowd. But this time: hardly a hat.

Allison Joyce/Getty Images

 

Flip back one more time. We're back, I think, in Union Square, with Emma Goldman arriving by car. She's another socialist (this isn't an essay about lefties, it's about hats) and there she is, the only woman in a sea of men wearing a sea of hats.

Wikimedia Commons

 

So what happened? Why did guys stop wearing headgear in midcentury America?
  The turning point, most people say, was John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Before Kennedy, all presidents wore top hats on their first day at work. Kennedy brought one, but hardly ever put it on. Fashionistas say Kennedy, one of our most charismatic presidents, made hats un-happen. And, chronologically speaking, after JFK, guys everywhere, even balding ones like astronaut John Glenn, went topless.

AP

  Astronaut John Glenn, left, and President John F. Kennedy, center, inspect the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule on Feb. 23, 1962, which Glenn rode in orbit. At right is Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.

But I am the son of a hat designer. And my father, Allen S. Krulwich, had a different explanation. The president who de-hatted America, he thought, was Dwight Eisenhower.

Here's my dad's logic.

In the 1950s — and this was one of Ike's grand accomplishments — he built a vast highway system across America. Interstates went up everywhere. Cities extended roads, turnpikes, highways, and suburbs appeared around every major city. People, instead of taking a bus, a tram, a train to work, could hop into their new Chevy or Ford and drive... (continued)

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