Figure 1.--This CDV of an unidentified American boy is undated. We would guess it was taken about 1870. The boy looks about 8 years old and wears a cut-away jacket with long pants. The jacket is very plsin except trim around the edges. He also wears a small bostriped bow. Note his dark hat. It is slightly conical and the top seems to roll back from the front. H is holding a stick and hoop toy. T these toys were also called hoop rolling as the stick would be used to roll the large metal hoop (this one may be wood) along the ground. The back is marked by the photographer Friedlander & Horwitz from near Cooper Institute, New York City.

We notice American boys wearing a variety of high-sided hats. We arenot talking about the very high-top hat that were worn by men in the 1850s-70s, but there are destinctive high sides, quite destinct from the much more popular rounded-crown hats without notable sides. They were somewhere between boaters and top hats. There were quitwea range of variations. In fact, there are so nany variables thst it is difficult to categorize these hats as a single type. Variations exist in the height, vericality of the side, width of brim, and the way the tops are done. The height was a range of heights greater than boaters or less than top hats. The verticality was both straight up and a range of angles. We notice another American boy, Clifton Harrison, wearing another high-sided hat, this one slightly conical, in 1866. It is very close to a boater, but the sides aa a nit to high we think to be called a boter. The brims also varied in width, but they were mostly small and medium widths. The hat tops were both rounded and flat tops. Our archive is still very limited and we have just begun to assess the many varies styles. We believe that one reason that there were so many of these hats was that mass production techniques were just beginning to be developed.

Created: 12:06 AM 2/7/2010
Last updated: 12:06 AM 2/7/2010