Life, 1905-04-06 · page 24 of 62
Life — April 6, 1905 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine article mocks Americans' obsession with fake colonial authenticity. The satire targets wealthy Yankees who fabricate "historic" inns and taverns to satisfy romantic nostalgia for New England's past. **The Scheme:** Entrepreneurs buy foreclosed farmhouses on worthless land, then use press agents, labor unions, and creative marketing to transform them into pseudo-colonial attractions. They add unnecessary architectural features, scatter Revolutionary-era props (fake pistols, spurious ancestor portraits), and slap names like "Ye Pyecroft Inn" on the buildings. **The Target:** The article ridicules both the con artists profiting from this fakery and the gullible wealthy tourists/residents who pay for it. The phrase "hash-house" suggests these aren't genuine historic sites but rather commercialized restaurants. **The Joke:** Americans desperately want connection to their colonial heritage but will happily accept obvious fabrications—bronze plaques claiming Adams "cussed" there—if presented with enough "quaint" theatrical decoration. It's historical fraud dressed as nostalgia.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Ye Colonial Inn. HAT is termed the study of his- tory in austere Ni sion for the of Christian variant of clairv table-rapping. The heart of dear old Yankeeland rapture to spurious ancestors who vie with fake chi tique Attleboro mantels; it throbs respon- arming-pans which share Salem spin- Puritan pewters ry, Conn. The glory of New England, nees termed d only one oes out in sive to May made born in Watert crowning those historical ror family histories, ne: more gle of an imaginary past, and it ious fake to complete the YE COLONIAL INN—REFORE THE RESTORATION. has arrived in Ye Colonial Inn, The inn but the quaint and ror cc Ye, which is the index and trade-nark of antiquity, settles the character of the inn for all time. many outs ; To appeal to the tender and romantic side of the Yankee, the historic hash-house must have a cute, quaint title like Ye Pyecrott Inn Ye Beanhurst Tavern, Ye Tomcod Hos- =4 telry ; for inthe dim and misty days of jocund old Cotton +f sy gaeares YY enwrarl father. the Y anke 2 roysterer, every other house wa: (eeinwomre 4) 4 atavern and "ie was one long, sweet song of revelry and C y ty good-fellowship The raw material of a historic inn of fakedom consists of a foreclosed mortgage, an abandoned f. mhouse, a boulder- strewn hill, some sterile acres adorned w trees, and a Revolutionary for bacilli and other medical suppl These, with some capital, a Washington legend, a press agent, printer's ink and public credulity, and Ye House of Ye Gold Brick is ready for a start. Labor unions are now hurled on the helpless, tottering farmhouse, and they proceed to reform it with shingle, plaster, lath and paint. Stairs are built where they are unnecessary ; chimneys and windows are placed where doors and stairs usually are; gables are ided for rickety ed plates, cou newspaper cuts, Masonic swords, shop-worn shotguns and other flotsam ast. The Revolutionary touch i: ne walls, green lawns and swinging ith fruitless apple ell, which is a cold storage vault ob- and jetsam of the tained by piazzas, st signs, and the immovable boulders are adorned with bronze YE ANCESTRAL BORE AT HIS DEADLY WORK, tablets to show where Adams cussed and Quincy stubbed comicbooks.com