"The typeface. The diereses. The profile of Eustace Tilley. All are characteristics of a magazine so iconic and tied to metropolitan chic that it had to be titled The New Yorker. But when founder and editor Harold Ross conceived of the publication in the mid-1920s, things were up in the air both creatively and financially. He had to secure the talent and the money to make his magazine a success. For the first, he turned to his close friends and fellow seat-mates at the historic Algonquin Round Table: Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman, and other wits who every morning would, to paraphrase Parker, brush their teeth and sharpen their tongues.

"But money Ross had in shorter supply. He and wife Jane Grant (not Jane Ross, mind you — Grant was an active member of the feminist Lucy Stone League) had some funds between them, but they needed to raise more. They turned to poker buddy Raoul Fleischmann — you may be more familiar with his family business from your grocery store baking aisle — who expanded his gambling to the publishing world and put down an additional $25,000. Ross then authored this prospectus, which set out to capture the voice and sophistication of his nascent weekly. “The New Yorker will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque,” it announced, immediately hitting the tone of arch snootiness that would define The New Yorker for 100 years."

Article: "Not For The Old Lady In Dubuque": Read The Original Vision For The New Yorker