Thanksgiving Eve Festivities in Baltimore, 1920s-30s
A blog post by Director of Collections and Exhibits Joanna Church. To read more posts by Joanna click HERE.
Happy Thanksgiving Eve! It’s traditionally the busiest travel day of the year in the US (though the Sunday afterward has taken the top spot in recent years), and apparently it is now a big party night, too. I feel like “Thanksgiving Eve” wasn’t really a thing when I was younger, but as our archives attest, many decades ago it was definitely an occasion for partying.
Miss Hilda Brager was presented at the 65th (!) annual Harmony Circle Thanksgiving Eve Ball on Wednesday, November 29th, 1922, at the Hotel Belvedere, Baltimore. She saved two newspaper clippings about the event and, even better, her teeny-tiny, much-folded dance card, in which her partners for each dance were noted in pencil:
The Harmony Circle was a German Jewish social club founded in 1860 (though if the Sun article headline is correct, they’d been holding the deb ball since 1857), largely for the purposes of introducing young ladies to society and, ideally, to a nice Jewish boy to marry. (For what it’s worth, Hilda did not marry any of her dance partners from this evening; her eventual husband’s name was Nehemiah Altman.)
***
The Harmony Circle was not the only game in town. On November 23, 1927, B’nai B’rith hosted the “event of the season” at the Southern Hotel (only two dollars a couple!) on Thanksgiving Eve.
Unfortunately, at the moment little else is known about this event, but I hope it was a good time.
***
The Junior Assembly of Baltimore joined the festivities by the late 1930s, hosting their Thanksgiving Eve Ball at the Hotel Belvedere on November 22, 1939.
This event sounds quite fancy, with “the Beau Brummel of Dance America, Charles Barnet” and “the glamorous Judy Ellington” providing the music, and a breakfast served starting at 1:30 a.m. Please note, if you’re thinking of joining in, tickets are $1.50 per person, and “Full Evening Dress is Obligatory.” I must admit, if I had to choose one of these three parties to attend tonight, this would be it.
***
So, however you choose to celebrate the night before Thanksgiving – be it on the road, quietly at home, or on the town – stay safe and have fun!