I had always heard that the 1920s were called the Roaring Twenties, but I never really saw the evidence for it... until today. I came across these fascinating and shocking photos from the decade, and they genuinely did something to my brain, and I have a feeling they'll do something to yours too.
Here are 30 wildly fascinating photos from the decade that prove the Roaring Twenties were every bit as wild as you've heard:
1. People during the Prohibition era really said “you can ban alcohol, but you can’t ban vibes.” From 1920 to 1933, the US outlawed the production and sale of alcohol, which somehow only made everyone want it more. This photo shows contraband beer being dumped into the streets like it committed a crime. Somewhere nearby, a man who waited three weeks for that barrel is probably having the worst day of his life.
2. Athleisure did exist back in the 1920s, but it looked nothing like the matching co-ord sets and sneakers people wear today. This woman is dressed to play basketball in boots, layered clothing, and perfectly done hair, which honestly makes modern gym fits look extremely low effort in comparison.
3. You really can’t talk about the 1920s without bringing up the Charleston dance craze. The fast-paced dance became wildly popular during the Jazz Age, with people everywhere trying to keep up with the kicks and spins. This photo shows contestants in a Charleston endurance contest, which is basically the 1920s version of seeing who could survive the longest on the dance floor before their knees gave up.
4. Aviator Charles Lindbergh became one of the biggest celebrities of the 1920s after completing the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927. Flying the Spirit of St. Louis, he traveled over 3,600 miles from New York to Paris in just 33.5 hours, which at the time probably sounded as unreal as someone casually announcing they were flying to space today.
5. Before actresses and influencers made the bob haircut a trend every few years, Louise Brooks had already done it in the 1920s, and honestly, nobody has topped it since. Her sharp jet-black bob with blunt bangs became one of the defining looks of the decade, especially after Now We’re in the Air released in 1927.
6. The fashion back then was really something else, and nothing proves that better than Josephine Baker’s famous banana skirt outfit. She debuted the look in Paris in 1926 during the Folies Bergère revue, wearing a belt made of sixteen rubber bananas along with pearl necklaces. The whole thing turned her into one of the biggest stars of the Jazz Age almost overnight.
7. The 1920s really knew how to put on a show, and the Ziegfeld Follies were proof of that. The famous chorus lines became a huge part of the decade’s entertainment scene, with glamorous showgirls posing in towering headdresses while highly trained dancers called the “ponies” handled the fast-paced choreography and kick lines. It was basically Broadway at its most extra. This photo shows choreographer Ned Wayburn lining up members of the Ziegfeld Follies chorus on a rooftop for their daily practice.
8. Back then, women smoking in public was seen as completely inappropriate, which honestly made this stunt even louder. On Easter Sunday in 1929, a group of wealthy young women marched down Fifth Avenue during New York’s Easter Parade and, at a planned signal, lit up Lucky Strike cigarettes and told reporters they were holding up their “Torches of Freedom.” It was meant to challenge old social rules, but it also ended up becoming one of the most famous publicity stunts of the decade.
9. This photo shows performers from the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem, one of the most famous nightlife spots of the 1920s. The club became a major stage for Black jazz musicians, singers, and dancers during the Jazz Age, even though it controversially catered only to white audiences at the time.
10. Even if you don’t know much about 1920s history, you’ve probably heard the name Al Capone at least once. The infamous Chicago gangster became one of the biggest figures of the Prohibition era, and this photo shows him casually playing cards while being transported to prison for tax evasion.
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11. This photo shows Secretary of Agriculture Howard M. Gore using a radio receiver set at a time when radios were becoming the biggest thing in American households. The 1920s basically kicked off the first real “everyone is tuned in to the same thing” era, as radio broadcasts exploded in popularity and millions of people started gathering around their sets for news, music, and entertainment.
12. Believe it or not, one of cinema’s most famous images came from this decade. This photo shows actor Harold Lloyd dangling from a giant clock in Safety Last! (1923), a scene that became legendary in silent film history.
13. This photo captures part of the famous 1927 boxing match between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey, better known as “The Long Count Fight.” The match became one of the most debated moments in boxing history after a controversial knockdown count, and judging by Dempsey’s battered face in this photo, the fight was every bit as brutal as its reputation suggests.
14. Sports crowds at that time were on another level, especially once Babe Ruth turned baseball into a massive national obsession. This photo shows the opening of Yankee Stadium in 1923, where over 74,000 fans packed into the venue, with some people literally standing behind ropes in the outfield just to watch the game.
15. This photo shows women lining up to vote in New York for the first time after the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920. After decades of protests, marches, and fighting to be taken seriously, women across the US finally gained the legal right to vote, and you can only imagine how huge this moment must have felt for the people standing in that line.
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16. Believe it or not, we also got the very first Miss America in this decade. This photo shows Margaret Gorman from Washington D.C., who became the face of the pageant in the early 1920s after winning a beauty contest originally created to keep tourists in Atlantic City after summer ended. Funny enough, she wasn’t officially called “Miss America” when she first won—the title was retroactively given to her in 1922 when she returned to defend her crown.
17. In the same decade where we had flappers, jazz clubs, and Josephine Baker performing in a banana skirt, women could still get stopped on beaches for wearing swimsuits that were considered “too short.” This photo shows a woman having her swimsuit measured by beach inspectors in the 1920s, when so-called “fashion police” actually patrolled beaches to enforce strict dress codes.
18. The decade really had people turning absolutely anything into entertainment, including sitting on top of flagpoles for weeks at a time. This photo shows Joe “Holdem” Powers balancing on a flagpole in Chicago in 1928 during the bizarre flagpole-sitting craze that swept across America, where people competed to see who could stay perched up there the longest.
19. Beauty salons looked less like salons and more like something out of an old sci-fi movie. This photo shows an “ultra-modern” hairdressing cubicle displayed in 1929, back when electrical beauty gadgets and complicated hair machines were becoming the newest obsession in salons.
20. Prohibition really turned alcohol smuggling into a full-time creative profession. This 1926 photo shows a woman hiding liquor containers under her clothes, carefully shaped to fit her body, during a time when people were constantly finding clever ways to sneak alcohol past authorities in the 1920s.
21. Long before wellness influencers started selling questionable fitness gadgets online, the 1920s already had vibrating slimming machines. This woman is using a ‘slender tone,’ a device that promised to shake people into their ideal figure.
22. Before people were binge-watching shows from their beds, television looked like this. In 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the world’s first public demonstration of live television in London by transmitting a flickering moving image of a ventriloquist dummy named Stooky Bill between two rooms. It looked terrifying by today’s standards, but it completely changed entertainment history.
23. This photo captures a worker casually sitting on a steel beam during the construction of the Chrysler Building in 1929, which is somehow both impressive and terrifying to look at. Built during New York’s huge skyscraper boom, the Art Deco tower became one of the defining buildings of the era as architects raced to create the tallest building in the world.
24. Before air conditioning existed, fire escapes basically became New York’s unofficial summer bedrooms. During brutal heatwaves in the 1920s, many families dragged blankets and pillows outside at night just to escape the suffocating heat inside cramped apartments. This 1929 photo shows two children sleeping outside to stay cool, something that was incredibly common at the time.
25. The 1920s didn’t just change music and nightlife—women’s fashion was changing fast too. This photo shows three women modeling knickerbockers and belted jackets as tailored, menswear-inspired outfits became more popular, replacing the restrictive styles that had dominated earlier decades.
26. If you've ever watched an MGM movie, you've probably seen that famous lion roaring before the film starts. This photo shows Jackie, the second lion used for the MGM logo and the first one whose roar was actually recorded. It's kind of wild to think that one of the most recognizable intros in movie history started with filmmakers setting up cameras and sound equipment around a real lion and hoping everything went according to plan.
27. Like every other aspect of life, doing laundry got a major upgrade—at least by 1928 standards. This photo shows a housewife demonstrating the Protos Turbowasher, one of the early electric washing machines that helped make a time-consuming household chore a little less exhausting.
28. I think some fashion trends are better left in the past, and this one is definitely on my list. This 1928 photo shows a woman wearing one of the decade’s more unusual fur accessories—the entire stuffed animal. As strange as it looks today, these were marketed as fashionable and practical because they could double as a muff, a hand-warmer popular before cars had reliable heating.
29. Imagine walking into a store and being shown a refrigerator like it was the latest piece of futuristic technology. This photo shows a salesman demonstrating an electric refrigerator, when owning one was a luxury. Some early models were so elaborate that the cooling system had to be connected to a separate motorized compressor installed in the basement.
30. I obviously had to end this list with a photo from the event that brought the Roaring Twenties to a crashing halt: the Great Depression. This photo shows a Wall Street speculator trying to sell his car after losing everything in the stock market crash, a stark reminder of how quickly the decade's optimism and excess came to an end.
This is exactly why I love looking through old photographs. History just hits differently when you can actually see it, and low-key, it's one of my favorite pastime activities. And if you know of a fascinating story or photo from the Roaring Twenties that more people should see, let us know in the comments!
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