If you needed bones or perhaps an entire skeleton, Gustave Noque was your man. This ad for his “osteological preparations” store on East 26th Street appeared in the back of Long Island City’s Bryant High School yearbook in 1916, amid more tepid advertisements for ice cream parlors and produce stands.
It’s a little jarring, especially in a nice little yearbook, but future medical students have to learn anatomy somehow.
Just a random page from The Owl, the yearbook for Queens’ William Cullen Bryant High School, 1916 edition. June is graduation month, and it’s neat to look back at some high school seniors who were students in an era when earning that diploma was no small achievement.
It’s hard not to like these kids, especially with the girls dressed in stylish middy blouses and the guy wearing a bow tie. I like the way they refer to one another as “chap” and “a pleasant companion.” And the school had its own gun club! Well, Long Island City was relatively rural at the time.
Bryant High School still exists, but no address is listed in the yearbook, so I don’t know if the same building has housed the school all this time. Here’s a photo of that school today.
You never really think that the boring local ads in your high school yearbook will one day act as a fascinating time capsule—taking readers back to the businesses that existed in your neighborhood and the services you and your family needed to live your lives.
This is the back page of the William Cullen Bryant High School yearbook, class of 1916, in Long Island City.
Ephemeral New York 
