Figure 1.---This portrait of the the three family children, two boys and a girl. The children are not identified, but we do know that they were 6-11 years of age and the portrait, that meant 6 years for the younger boy, 8 years for their sister, and 11 years for the older boy. We also know the photograph was taken in 1937. While we do not know the family name, we can tell they were a family living in comfortable circumstances even during the Great Depression. The abnormally long format was hard to get on the page. Click on the image to see thetheir older brother.

High-top shoes were still standard at the turn-of the 20th century. We do see more boys wearing strap shoes were seen again at the beginning of the 20th century. Both biys and girls wore them. More boys wore strap shoes with Fautleroy suits. And Buster Brown suits and tunic suits were normally worn with strap shoes or sandals. This was also true with a variety of other outfits such as Oliver twist suits. We also notice boys in dressy tunic suits wearing them. Walter Roberts on the previous page is a good example (figure 1). Another good example is an unidentified boy in the 1910s. This boy wore double-bar strap shoes. Strap shoes were dressy shoes until the 1920s when they were worn by younger boys for play. They were most common in the early 20th century. A good example is Carl Kellison about 1910. We also notice the ankle strap shoe. A good example is the Nethery boys in 1915. Another example is Keith Birkin, we think in the 1910s. After World War there was a significant divergence in gender conventins. Strap shoes were still worn by American boys, mostly boys from affluent families, in the 1930s for dressy occassions, but not to school. Strap shoe were even less common for boys in the 1940s. Some younger boys might wear them at mid-century. And we even see younger school age boys occasionally wearing them for very formal occasions even into the 1960s, but this was reltively rare and would have been for fomal occassions.

Created: 4:28 PM 8/26/2014
Last updated: 4:28 PM 8/26/2014