Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
The Harvard varsity crew team on June 18, 1913. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.
50 years after this picture was taken I started rowing in a Lightweight 8 at Delft University in Delft in the Netherlands, I started as coxswain and my last name is ... Abels!
I really really enjoy looking at the guys in these rowing pictures....
I wasn't looking at the lack of elastic, I was admiring the thumb print over the head of the man sitting on the sawhorses. Nice whorls! Ok..so I was also admiring the exposed male forms. Won't happen again.
I don't know anything about elastic and it didn't even cross my mind...instead, here's what popped into my odd head:
I thought how I would want Goodale (sp?) to be the father of my sons, Harwood to be the father of my daughters, and what the heck is wrong with McVicar? He's awfully handsome, but does he have scoliosis? A hernia? Both?
Seriously anonymous,
One weird history buff
["Exposed male form"? Feeling a little uncomfortable here! - Dave]
Feeling a little, umm, prickly there, Dave?
Why is it that every time one of these Varsity photos appears, people are compelled to speculate wildly about the history of elastic? Is it that Americans are uncomfortable with the exposed male form? Whenever a guy takes his clothes off it seems as if everyone's reduced to a bunch of giggling, pointing schoolchildren!
["Exposed male form"? Feeling a little uncomfortable here! - Dave]
Elastic thread wasn't invented until the 1930s.
Speaking of loose-fitting underwear...
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5