THE 1920 PHILADELPHIA FOLK MONOPOLY GAME --- AN OLD oRIGINAL ANTIQUE GAME
This game is not licensed nor produced by Hasbro, Inc., producers of MONOPOLY® game equipment & related marketing efforts.
1920 PHILADELPHIA FOLK MONOPOLY GAME
THE 1920 PHILADELPHIA FOLK MONOPOLY GAME - A PHILADELPHIA MAIN LINE & HAVERFORD COLLEGE CONNECTION
THE 1920 PHILADELPHIA FOLK MONOPOLY GAME is an original hand-crafted, antique 100 plus year-old MONOPOLY game created beginning in the fall of 1920. It reflects the 1920 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, especially the Main Line western suburbs near Haverford College. The game set was created by two sons of an old Main Line Quaker family who were graduates of the Haverford College classes of 1922 & 1924. This game was played with classmates at Haverford College and their nearby family home in Haverford, Pennsylvania.
The two brothers, Edward (Ted) Allinson Taylor and Lawrence (Larry) Newbold Taylor, were introduced to, learned about and played the folk monopoly game during late summer 1920 while staying at their family's cabin within the private Pocono Lake Preserve. Larry and Ted were taught the folk monopoly game by Rexford Guy Tugwell a Wharton School graduate who, along with his wife, spent two weeks as guests of Henry Woolman at his nearby cabin within the Pocono Lake Preserve.
Consequently, The 1920 Philadelphia Folk Monopoly Game is part of the “Wharton Woodies” lineage. “Wharton Woodies” is an appellation coined by the writer that applies to wood folk monopoly game boards originating out of and played at the Wharton School.
After obtaining his master's degree in 1916 and disillusioned by the encroachments imposed upon Wharton faculty, Tugwell left Pennsylvania in 1917 for a year at the University of Washington in Spokane, Washington. He left there after one year when he departed to France during WWI, after accepting an opportunity arranged by Felix Frankfurter in 1918 to manage the American University Union. This was a leave center in Paris, France run by a consortium of a dozen universities for American officers serving in France. In 1919, Tugwell returned to Wharton to pursue his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. A degree which he was awarded later in 1922 after some delay. In 1920 Tugwell secured a position at Columbia University teaching economics. See the “HISTORY OF MONOPOLY” webpage for more information.
During this time in late summer 1920 Rexford Guy Tugwell was transitioning his household from Philadelphia, PA to New York, NY to take up a professorship position at the Columbia graduate school of economics. The two week stay at the Pocono Lake Preserve was a vacation layover during this transition. As an economics professor at Columbia, Tugwell introduced both the folk monopoly game and the folk landlord’s games there. He was a member of the Columbia faculty from 1920–1936. As an active supporter of the New Deal, Rex Tugwell was a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Brain Trust," a group of six academics, including Felix Frankfurter, that advised FDR during his time as New York governor and later during his presidency.
Coincidently, another direct human link between The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game and the FDR administration is Edwin (Edward) Bernard Rosskam. Edwin Rosskam was a freshman class-mate of Larry Taylor and he painted The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY game board during his only year (1920-21) at Haverford College. Afterwards he left Haverford to study art at the University of Pennsylvania. Edwin Rosskam later went on to become a famous depression era photographer within the Franklin Roosevelt Administration and had a successful photography career thereafter.
Circa 1948-1949, about twenty-eight years after their folk MONOPOLY game was created, the family home was vacated and the The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game set was misplaced, lost and never recovered by the Taylor brothers.
In 1973, approximately twenty-five years later, Larry Taylor responded to a newspaper article regarding the fictional Charles Darrow monopoly game creation story. Larry wrote a letter-to-the-editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune titled "Missed A Monopoly Chance”, signed "Lawrence N. Taylor, Venice", that was published on Sunday, August 12, 1973. In his letter, Larry describes the hand-crafted monopoly game that he and his brother Ted began making in the fall of 1920. Larry wrote about their game's history and attributes that clearly identifies The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game. To see the article, go to the "Missed A Monopoly Chance" web page within this website.
Two years later in 1975, Larry Taylor was deposed as part of the Anspach - Parker Bros. litigation. In his deposition, Larry identified additional attributes of the hand-crafted game he, his brother Ted, and various school mates made. The attributes Larry described definitively identify The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY game set. In addition, the game set itself exhibits attributes specifically referencing Ted, and referencing Ted and Larry Taylor's extended family holdings. This provides capstone and indisputable provenance of the direct linkage between The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game and its' makers Ted & Larry Taylor.
Fast forwarding thirty-nine years later to the summer of 2014, 66 years after the Taylor brothers lost possession of their folk MONOPOLY game and 94 years after they created it, the folk MONOPOLY game resurfaced. It was listed on eBay and auctioned as part of an unrelated Philadelphia family estate sale. The auction was subsequently won by Malcolm Graeme Holcombe, Jr. the creator and writer of this website.
At the time, there were only two pieces of information about the MONOPOLY game provided by the estate liquidator that was obtained from the heir of the estate. One, was that the heir's mother, from whose estate possessed the game set, told the heir not to give the game away because it was worth some money. And, two, that the game was originally owned within the family by the heir's grandfather. This was the extent of what the heir knew of the game. The estate liquidator would not divulge additional information regarding the estate. However, the writer was able to locate the necessary information via the estate liquidator’s website since it was the only estate being handled by the estate liquidator at the time. The family’s name and the estate liquidator’s name remains confidential in respect for their privacy.
Based upon an extensive in-depth research of the estate family and The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game properties, the writer determined that the heir's grandfather who possessed the game was not the creator, nor the original owner of the game. The grandfather and immediate family did not fit the demographic profile of early folk monopoly game players of the era and disqualified when the actual dating and lineage of The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game was later identified in 2017 based upon Larry's 1973 letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune was discovered by the writer.
As a result, The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game's origin history and lineage has been re-established and the antique game set turned 100 years-old in 2020.
One critically unique characteristic of The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game set is that it is clearly and indisputably a formal MONOPOLY real estate board game. The game board center prominently exhibits the word “MONOPOLY” and is the only known folk monopoly game set to date that does so on the game boar. And, did so approximately 15 years prior to Charles Darrow's fraudulent Monopoly patent application and subsequent awarded patent assigned to Parker Brother's which resulted in the production of their commercial Trade-Mark Monopoly game.
Consequently, The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game is tangible evidence of a formal MONOPOLY real estate trading game extant in the public domain in 1920. It reinforces the voluminous circumstantial evidence gathered by Ralph Anspach of numerous folk monopoly players who testified they played a real estate game called “monopoly” before Charles Darrow’s introduction to the folk monopoly games.
Lastly, The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game is the oldest known formal MONOPOLY game set exhibiting a number of firsts in the folk monopoly game world as follows:
1. The game set uses both paper and poker chip money.
2. The game set includes custom made-for-the-game movers/ markers/ tokens which are literally “men” as they represent 11 US Presidents. Made of mahogany wood, they were hand carved by Larry Taylor, who was known at Haverford College as a carver of little men.
3. The game set exhibits unique hand-carved three-dimensional hand carved (also by Larry Taylor) rectangular mahogany wood houses which exhibit two additional unique characteristics:
a. Each house has a pin sticking out from the bottom center of the house that snugly fits into a single hole drilled into the game board adjacent to the property numbers - consequently, the houses are not easily knocked off the board, an act that most monopoly players have personally experienced; and
b. There are five categories of houses with 1-5 holes drilled from side-to-side so that each of the four sides of each house exhibit at least one window that one can see through and up to five windows per side – in other words, the number of windows per house (1-5) indicates the number of housing improvements on a property. This characteristic eliminates the crowding of multiple houses on a property since only one house, with the correct number of windows, is snugly fitted to the property to which it belongs and therefore no need for hotels due to space constraints.
As a result of these characteristics, this game set is the total package. And, the quality of materials and construction speak for themselves.
THE 1920 PHILADELPHIA FOLK MONOPOLY GAME BOARD - HANDCRAFTED FOLK ART
The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game set provides a tour of Philadelphia locales during a time when playing folk monopoly was just beginning to become a popular pastime at north-eastern, eastern and south-eastern seaboard colleges, after first being played at Wharton, Haverford & Swarthmore. Eventually, folk monopoly game play also extended to the mid-west to Michigan and Indiana.
The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game board is a well-engineered, hand-crafted, and finely finished wood game board constructed for generations of game play.
THE 1920 PHILADELPHIA FOLK MONOPOLY GAME BOX - HANDCRAFTED UTENSILS
The 1920 Philadelphia Folk MONOPOLY Game utensils box contains:
- Leather Dice Cup w/ Cellulose Dice
- Manual Typewritten Property Deeds
- Large & Small Haverford College Card Stock Paper Money
- Hand carved Mahogany Wood Houses with open Windows
- Hand carved Mahogany Presidential Men/ Movers/ Tokens
A separate caddy holds poker chip money.