{"id":178448,"date":"2025-04-09T08:08:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T08:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-april-9-2025-a-great-gatsby-centennial-foshay-tower\/"},"modified":"2025-04-09T08:08:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T08:08:32","slug":"americanstudies-april-9-2025-a-great-gatsby-centennial-foshay-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=178448","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: April 9, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Foshay Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[On April 10th<\/sup>,
\n1925<\/a>, F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s novel The Great Gatsby<\/i> was published
\nby Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons<\/a>. While I have
\nmy problems with Gatsby<\/i><\/a>, it remains one of our most influential and important
\nnovels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I\u2019ll
\nhighlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellow
\nGatsbyStudiers!]<\/p>\n

[NB. I
\noriginally wrote this post for an August 2013 series on things I had recently
\nlearned, but both that spirit and the specifics remain entirely relevant here
\nin April 2025!]<\/span><\/p>\n

On the building and enterpreneur that bring an American icon to life.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Midwest in general, and Minnesota in particular, occupy important
\nplaces in Jay Gatsby\u2019s story. <\/span>F. Scott Fitzgerald himself<\/span><\/a> had been born in
\n<\/span>Saint Paul, Minnesota<\/span><\/a>, the state\u2019s
\ncapital and the twin city to Minneapolis; while Fitzgerald gives Gatsby an
\nunspecified North Dakota birthplace, he has him attend college (briefly) at
\nMinnesota\u2019s <\/span>St. Olaf College<\/span><\/a>. And while Gatsby spends the rest of his <\/span>tragically short life<\/span><\/a> running away from those Midwestern origin points, Nick Carraway argues in
\nthe book\u2019s concluding moments that the story has been <\/span>a profoundly Western<\/span><\/a> (by which, given the locations to which he\u2019s referring, he means what we
\nwould call Midwestern) one.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve recently learned about a Minneapolis history that reverses Gatsby\u2019s geographic
\ntrajectory but seems in many ways to mirror his identity. <\/span>Wilbur Foshay<\/span><\/a>, born in upstate New
\nYork, moved to Minneapolis in the 1920s to pursue his dreams of wealth and
\nsuccess, and like Gatsby he embodied those dreams in a spectacular, garish
\nedifice. For Foshay that building was not a mansion but a <\/span>skyscraper, Foshay Tower<\/span><\/a>; modeled after the Washington Monument, an early encounter with which
\nFoshay credited with inspiring his dreams, the Tower was completed in 1929, at
\na dedication ceremony that included <\/span>a march written for the occasion and conducted by John Philip Sousa<\/span><\/a>. And Foshay\u2019s dreams crashed as suddenly and nearly as
\ndramatically as Gatsby\u2019s: first with the Great Depression, which began only
\nmonths after the dedication and left the Tower unoccupied; and then with <\/span>a famous trial in which Foshay was convicted of mail fraud (for running a
\npyramid scheme)<\/span><\/a> and sentenced to 15
\nyears in prison.<\/span><\/p>\n

Foshay\u2019s story doesn\u2019t end there\u2014President Roosevelt granted him a partial
\npardon, commuting 10 years off the sentence\u2014and I\u2019m interested to learn more
\nabout what seems to me just as iconic a story of the 1920s and the American
\nDream as Fitzgerald\u2019s novel. America is full of such complex and compelling
\nidentities and stories\u2014enough to spend a career AmericanStudying them!<\/span><\/p>\n

Next
\nGatsbyStudying tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What do
\nyou think? Takes on Fitzgerald\u2019s novel or its contexts? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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