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The roaring twenties witnessed American materialism rise to new heights. A period of high culture was inaugurated for the first time since the excesses of the Gilded Age. Out of this pecuniary pandemonium came the New Yorker magazine, a publication dedicated to the new cosmopolitan elite. An elite that wanted their culture in aesthetically pleasing bite-size packets. The New Yorker met the challenge presented by the nouveau riche head on, the numerous advertisements appearing in each issue testify to this very fact. The advertisements below are a sampling of the "appeal to wealth" made by Madison Avenue on the eve of the infamous Market Crash. A closer look at what these advertisements are saying about American culture leads one to an obvious conclusion, the New Yorker was the national mouthpiece for defining "classy" living. Thus, the New Yorker served as a guide for the many Americans who rose to riches during the boom of the twenties, and needed a crash course in what it meant to be "high class".
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