Social networking in 1920's bohemia

Harry Kemp could have been a heavyweight of the twittersphere: a hundred years before google +, his circle of associates covered actors, tramps, poets, socialists, seafarers and book editors. This month, UT Austin does a little retroactive mapping of Greenwich Village social ties, with a new online exhibit, “The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia 1920-1925,” inspired by the actual bookshop door:

In the early 1920s, noteworthy visitors to Frank Shay's bookshop at 4 Christopher Street began autographing the narrow door that opened onto the shop's office. Signed by 242 artists, writers, publishers, and other notable habitués of Greenwich Village, this unusual artifact is now housed at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

The project uses new technology to curate an exhibit previously though unfeasible:

Massive databases of searchable books, newspapers and magazines from the 1920s that are now available online have made it possible to identify dozens of the more obscure names on the door in a matter of minutes or hours. The internet's flexible structure allows us to more easily reconstruct the community and its complex web of associations. The flowering of virtual social networking in recent years inspired us to see how it was now possible to reconstruct a community that was firmly grounded in the physical space of 4 Christopher Street. Finally, the web enables us to join in one place hundreds of items housed in more than 60 separate collections in the Ransom Center. Image metadata and links to catalogs and finding aids ensure that researchers can find these materials and study them further.

The rich resources of the web are, of course, a bittersweet development for those of us who have long loved browsing, talking, and learning from each other in bookstores. While resources on the internet have fostered this project, they have also led directly to the closure of thousands of bookstores over the last decade. We hope that telling the story of this shop and its community will encourage audiences to be mindful of the history of bookstores, bookselling, book buying, and the power of place, as we experience this moment of enormous change.

Have an insatiable urge to trace Sherwood Anderson’s Little Magazine connections? Looking for the dirt on Dos Passos? Get hobnobbing!