3ure 4. — "The Bathe at Newport," by Winslow Homer, JIaipei's Weekly .\ewspaper, Septembt-r 1858. 



(.Smithsonian photo 59665.) 



many railroad lines had been completed by the 

 1850s, transportation problems were by no means 

 solved. For example, a New York tourist who planned 

 to enjoy a summer at Lake George had to travel by 

 boat from New York City to Albany and Troy, 

 then by railroad to Morean Corner, and, finally, 

 by stage to the lake. After listing the difficulties 

 endured by excursionists, a particularly embittered 

 correspondent commented in 1856, ". . . we en\-y 

 these happy people in nothing but the power to 

 be idle.'' -' 



By the 1870s, tra\el facilities were rapidly being 

 improved and many new summer resorts were 

 established which appealed to a larger segment of 

 the population. 



Comparatively few can stay long at one time at the springs 

 or seaside resorts, and hence the peculiar value of arrange- 

 ments like those for enabling multitudes to take Irequent 

 short pleasant excursions down the New York Bay and 

 along the Atlantic coast, as well as up the Hudson, and 

 through Long Island Sound. ^~ 



Beaches that catered to a large cross-section of the 

 population provided a wide variety of informal 

 acti\ities that replaced the established functions 

 foimd at the more select bathing resorts. For example, 

 the illustration of Coney Island in 1878 (fig. 5) 

 shows a puppet show; pony rides for children; a 

 hiu'dv gurdy; vendors of walking sticks, siuiglasses, 



-I Frank Leilir's Illiulraled Newspaper (July 26, 1856), vol. 2, 

 no. a, p. 102. 



-- ".Suinnier Recreation," Frank Lesiic^s llluslrated Neicspape, 

 (June 18, 1870), vol. 30, no. 768, p. 210. 



10 



BULLETIN 250 : CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY .AND TECHNOLOGY 



