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This is a unidentified urban school, we believe in the Northwest. The fact black children are in the class indicates that it was a northern school. We are not entirely sure about the date. We think it may have been taken anout 1900, but the late 1890s is a real possibility. All we have to go on is the fashions the children are wearing. It is clearly an urban school. We see what must be a substantial brick building in the background. The photograph shows one class at the school. We think it may be the freshman class at a high school. The finishing 8th grade class at a primary school is possible, but some f the students look lije thet might be 14 years old. The boys mostly wear double-breasted suits. Many of the boys wear knee pants with long black stockings. One reason we think the photograph was taken in the very early 1900s or late 1890s is the diversity of neckwear. As you get unto the 1900s you begin to more and more boys wearing standard neckties. The girls wear both dresses and white blouses and skirts.
This is a unidentified urban school, we believe in the Northwest. The fact black children are in the class indicates that it was a northern school. It is clearly an urban school. We see what must be a substantial brick building in the background.
We are not entirely sure about the date. We think it may have been taken anout 1900, but the late 1890s is a real possibility. All we have to go on is the fashions the children are wearing. The fact tat some of the boys seemto be wearing long pants suggested that the class portrait here might have been taken in the 1910s, but I think that the neckwear definitively dates it to the trub-pof-the 20th century.
The photograph shows one class at the school. We think it may be the freshman class at a high school (9th grade). The finishing 8th grade class at a primary school is possible, but some of the students look like thet might be 14 years old, the age students began 9th grade.
One reason we think the photograph was taken in the very early 1900s or late 1890s is the diversity of neckwear. As you get unto the 1900s you begin to more and more boys wearing standard neckties. The boys mostly wear double-breasted suits. Many of the boys wear knee pants with long black stockings. We thought that some boys may be wearing knickers, but long pants seem more likely. A reader writes, "It would seem that they are wearing long trousers. I
suppose below-the-knee knickers is a possibility. But were such
knickers worn as early as 1900? I'm not sure, but I think these boys
are a bit too young to be wearing long trousers in 1900--14 or 15? " Well knickers did exist, but knee pants were much more common. Too common for three boys I think to be wearing knickers in a portrait like this.
About knee pants. It is true that even older boys wore knee pants. But it is also true that even younger boys wore long pants, based on the age ranges in the catalogs. The girls wear both dresses and white blouses and skirts. Notice that one of the boys kneeling, the one with his jacket unbuttoned, has no belt on, which means that he is wearing suspenders to hold up his knee pants. You can see by the way his trousers are hiked up that he is wearing suspenders. He could, of course, be wearing an ordinary pair of button-on suspenders. In this case he would probably use a skeleton waist or underwaist with supporters to hold us his long black stockings. But he might equally well be wearing a suspender waist, a garment that combined suspenders for trousers and garters for long stockings.
Notice the popularity of center hair parts. A reader writes, "I notice that with the girls' hair so pulled back as many of them are and with center parts just like the boys that just looking at the faces
makes it hard to determine which gender is which. I imagine that this is even harder when the children are younger."
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