Social History
Social History• January 6, 2012

The polish, paradox, and paradise of Palm Beach

Happy New Year! With results of the presidential Iowa caucus soon to be known and the outcome of the Town of Palm Beach’s caucus on Tuesday night a near certainty, given the three incumbent councilmen are unopposed, it should be reassuring to know Palm Beach and Dubuque have something in common. Nonetheless, anytime Palm Beach […]...

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Part IX: After the War, January 1946 – March 1947

Social History• January 6, 2012.
Part IX: After the War, January 1946 – March 1947 Palm Beach – Mackay Point Plantation – Bermuda – Aboard the SS America For this series of images documenting Ellen Glendinning Frazer’s life following WW II, I have made selections from photographs depicting her return to Palm Beach at Felix and Ann du Pont’s Villa Tranquilla, a ... READ MORE
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Part VIII: Social Rites during World War II, 1942-1945

Social History• December 19, 2011.
For this next installment of Ellen Glendinning Frazer’s photographic chronicle, I selected images from more than ten volumes containing several thousand photographs from 1942 to 1945 and arranged them within two separate topical headings: Social Rites: War and Weddings and At Ease: Chestnut Hill, Watch Hill, Mackay Point Plantation, Long I... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach, Part I

Palm Beach• September 3, 2011.
We are taking today off to continue to optimize the back end of the new site. In the meantime, please enjoy Part 1 of Augustus Mayhew’s series on Philadelphian Ellen Glendinning (first published on these pages in 2011), who kept an extensive diary where she recorded and photographed the life around her family and friends; a chronological scrapboo... READ MORE
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Resort Life between the Wars: Part VII, 1940

Social History• August 19, 2011.
Resort Life between the Wars: Part VII, 1940 Chestnut Hill – Long Island – Lake Bluff – Saratoga By the spring of 1940 the nation was on edge as the war in Europe rapidly disintegrated any hope for peace. This segment of Ellen Glendinning Frazer’s social chronicle records pleasures and pursuits far removed from the everyday world... READ MORE
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Part VI: Palm Beach – Northeast Harbor – Palm Beach

Social History• August 8, 2011.
Resort Life between the Wars: Part VI, 1939-1940 Palm Beach – Maine – Chestnut Hill – Palm Beach Click. Snap. Flash. Philadelphian Ellen Glendinning Frazer was never without her camera. Her family and friends and the places where she lived and traveled became the subjects of her developing photographic craft. And when those friends happ... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part V, 1938-1939

Social History• August 2, 2011.
Watch Hill – Middleburg – Palm Beach During the carefree summer of 1938 Watch Hill Beach Club and the Misquamicut Golf Club members sharpened their backhands and refined their putts, unsuspecting of the looming disaster from the late September hurricane that would devastate their idyllic resort. But however much the Great Hurricane of 1938, as ... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part IV, 1938

Social History• July 29, 2011.
Philadelphia-Palm Beach-Watch Hill cosmopolitan Ellen Glendinning Frazer focused her camera on the private lives of society’s most extraordinary personalities, making for an entertaining biographical chronicle of the faces and places often regarded as America’s social aristocracy. With her first husband Persifor Frazer III remarried and... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part III, 1935-1938, cont.

Social History• July 21, 2011.
January 1936 Arizona Biltmore Hotel, Scottsdale January 1936 Montecito February 1936 Arizona Inn, Tucson February 1936 Castle Hot Springs, Arizona Hacienda De La Osa Sasabe, Arizona November 1936 Hindenburg PALM BEACH February 1937 April 1937 Luncheon at the Wolcott Blairs April 1937 A night class in photography April 1937 Du Pont house party, Newt... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part III, 1935-1938

Social History• July 20, 2011.
Tea in Chestnut Hill with Mrs. Albert (Rebecca) Pancoast, mother-in-law of Joseph Widener, a weekend hunt at Gertrude “Gertie” Sanford Legendre’s Medway Plantation, cocktails and dinner with Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney and Kay Denckla at the Arizona Desert School, lunch with Amory and Dolly Carhart on Fishers ... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part II, 1931-1935, cont.

Social History• July 12, 2011.
Chicago, June 1933 In Chicago for a Garden Club meet and a party at Marion McKinlock’s, Ellen Frazer visited the International Exposition. Chestnut Hill, 1933-1935 Amidst the Wood, Field and Stream, 1934. January-March, 1935. El Paso, Tucson, Scottsdale, and Palm Springs. Before heading to Palm Beach in late March and April, Ellen Frazer and ... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part II, 1931-1935

Social History• June 10, 2011.
Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part II, 1931-1935 In March New York Social Diary featured the first part of a series Philadelphia in Palm Beach: 1920-1931 adapted from Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway’s voluminous biographical scrapbook of photographs. For this next chapter, I perused the more than 3,000 images Ellen Frazer compiled in a six-volu... READ MORE
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The April 1987 PEN dinner

Social History• April 5, 2011.
Twenty-four years ago this month, at the Metropolitan Club, there was a PEN dinner to beat all previous PEN dinners. It was chaired by Gayfryd Steinberg who was then one of the reigning queens of New York Society. The top ticket was $750, which in those days was like $5000 today, and it was a sell-out. Mrs. […]... READ MORE

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