Celebrating The New Yorker’s Centennial: 100 Years Ago Today Issue #1 Hit The Newsstands

It was on this date (a Tuesday that year), February 17, 1925, that The New Yorker first appeared on newsstands. The magazine was initially a failure but picked up steam by year’s end. As noted in a variety of histories of the magazines, although that first issue didn’t set off fireworks, it contained foundational editorial and graphic elements that would last a century. Consider the cover itself. The vertical “strap” remains to this day, as does the typeface (although it’s been tidied up a few times in the past century). A hundred years later, the cover still puzzles. And yet: Rea Irvin’s top-hatted fellow, later named Eustace Tilley, remains the graphic representation of the magazine. Perhaps I read more into that first cover than was intended by Ross and Irvin — perhaps not. I see it as a declaration of being the outsider, by not putting a movie star on the cover or a politician or an illustration tied to the week’s events. The cover dares you to look inside.

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–above: The wooden train set newsstand shown here is a bit forward in time (the magazines displayed are from a few decades later), but for today it serves its purpose.