Life in New York in 1915

Life in New York in 1915 was great…if you were rich…and White…or not Irish…or not a woman……or you didn't catch the flu…or walked in the middle of the streets. It was definitely a time of change. A time on the edge of women getting the right to vote and the beginning of the war with the highest body count. Electricity was just now entering homes as was the refrigerator. 

I had to do a lot of research for the novel to make sure the lives of the characters was as normal as possible (minus all of the fantasy stuff that happens to everyone). Whenever someone eats, they are actually eating a meal which would have been served during that period. What they wear, drive and even say was researched. I even researched what the weather was like in New York in that summer. 

Real celebrities were used such as Mary's friend Alva Vanderbilt Belmont of THE Vanderbilts, a wealthy socialite who used her fortune to advance the women's rights movement of the early 1900s. Also real, Mary's  instructors: fencing, piano and opera,  we're all real people living at that time. The interesting thing is, the picture of the woman I used for Mary's likeness is an actress who lived in New York at that time named Marie Doro. I found a photo of Marie Doro rehearsing a play with no other than ALVA VANDERBILTBELMONT! I had no idea that they really knew each other!

Photo shows group in rehearsal for "Melinda and her Sisters," written and produced at the Waldorf Astoria, New York, 1916, by Alva Belmont. Included are: Marie Dressler (second from left), Alva Belmont (4th from left), Marie Doro (Mary) (2nd from right), and Elsa Maxwell (far right). (Source: Book published in 1992 "Alva, That Vanderbilt-Belmont Woman," by Margaret H. Rector, cited 2009)

 Here is a film of New York in 1911 showing what life was like in the days of Mary Mack.