Diana Broadway vintage shoes

[Dilly Day]

I have just acquired this pair of shoes and wondered if anyone knows this brand? I found a few pairs of their shoes and boots for sale online but can't find any information about the company. When I search for Diana Broadway shoes all I get is stuff about a Princess Diana musical on Broadway!
I found the exact same pair in brown on Etsy and they were described as 1940s shoes. I think they are possibly vintage but not actually 1940s made. They are a smooth navy suede (or nubuck?), the soles are leather and they have elasticated laces with metal tips. They are supposedly for the broader foot but are too narrow for me although I normally wear size 5.5 shoes.
Any information would be appreciated.

 

[dollsntrolls]

These absolutely look 40s. I don’t know anything about the company, but the art of being a cobbler has been lost since the days of small, local brands - gone long before the internet killed the mall. And, shoes were so well made back then! Take care of them and they’ll last another lifetime.

 

[Dilly Day]

Thanks- I was lucky to find them. They just looked so perfect that I found it hard to believe they were that old!

 

[lkranieri]

I just spent the past hour and a half writing a very wordy reply about Diana Broadway shoes and when I wanted to insert a picture, the VFG forum said I needed to log back in. When I did that I lost my entire reply except this earlier opening:

"I think by the time I got this reply to you, the shoes are now another decade older, but I finally found enough material to cobble together (pardon the shoemaker pun) a reply. While there may have been an undiscovered earlier history for Diana shoes, the first reference I found was a 1921 advertisement for an agent for Diana shoes."

If I can pull together the energy to try to retype it all I will, but it may be a while and I may post it in parts, so I don't lose it all again...

I will post just this image for now, so you can get an idea of the era of Diana Broadway shoes. This chart lists how many references to Diana and Broadway appeared in the search results. I found the majority of the search hits in the 1930s and far fewer in just the early 1940s. Not all the hits were for Diana Broadway shoes and many 1940s references were just to articles that had those two words in them, but had nothing to do with the shoes...especially after the early 1940s.

 

[Dilly Day]

Oh, how frustrating after all that effort. Thank you for taking the time and trouble.
I knew that DB shoes were still being made in the 1970s but I had no idea that they dated as far back as the 1920s.