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America at Leisure
Topics for Leisure
-Amusement parks
Children in the Surf, Coney Island
Rube and Mandy at Coney Island
Shooting the Chutes
Shooting the Chutes, Luna Park, Coney Island
-Autmobile Racing
Automobile Race for the Vanderbilt Cup
-Ballooning
Society Ballooning, Pittsfield, Mass.
-Baseball
The Ball Game
-Basketball
Basket Ball, Missouri Valley College
-Boxing
Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph
Leonard-Cushing Fight
International Contest for the Heavyweight Championship-Squires vs. Burns
-Boat Racing
Auto Boat Race on the Hudson
Boat Race
"Columbia" Winning the Cup
-Canoeing
Canoeing on the Charles River, Boston, Mass.
-County Fairs
Rube Couple at County Fair
-Egg Rolling
Babies Rolling Eggs
Tossing Eggs
-Expositions *
Asia in America, St. Louis Exposition
Circular Panorama of Electric Tower
Esquimax Game of Snap-the-Whip
Esquimax Leap-Frog
Esquimax Village
A Glimpse of the San Diego Exposition
Horse Parade at the Pan-American Exposition
Japanese Village
Midway of Charleston Exposition
Opening Ceremonies, St. Louis Exposition
Opening, Pan-American Exposition
Pan-American Exposition by Night
Panorama of Esplanade by Night
Panoramic View of Charleston Exposition
Panoramic View of Electric Tower from a Balloon
Parade of Floats, St. Louis Exposition
Sham Battle at the Pan-American Exposition
Spanish Dancers at the Pan-American Exposition
A Trip Around the Pan-American Exposition
*For more information on the Pan-American Exposition, go to The Last Days of a
President: Films of McKinley and the Pan-American Exposition, 1901.
-Fishing
Bass Fishing
Brook Trout Fishing
-Football
Chicago-Michigan Foot ball Game
Princeton and Yale Football Game
-Hockey
Hockey Match on the Ice
-Horse Racing
The Brooklyn Handicap-1904
Free-for-all Race at Charter Oak Park
Racing at Sheepshead Bay
-Ice Skating
Skating on Lake, Central Park
-Movie Theaters
[Claremont Theatre, N.Y.]
-Parades
Annual Baby Parade, 1904, Asbury Park, N.J.
Annual Parade, New York Fire Department
Atlantic City Floral Parade
Buffalo Police on Parade
[Labor Day Parade]
Parade of Floats, St. Louis Exposition
Procession of Floats
St. Patrick's Day Parade, Lowell, Mass.
-Resort holidays
[Easter Sunday, Atlantic City Boardwalk]
-Roller skating
The Roller Skate Craze
-Sleighing
Sleighing Scene
-Swimming
Bathing at Atlantic City
Boys Diving, Honolulu
Children in the Surf, Coney Island
Kanakas Diving for Money, No.2
Lurline Baths
Sutro Baths
Sutro Baths, no.1
Swimming Pool, Palm Beach
Women of the Ghetto Bathing
-Touring national parks
Coaches arriving at Mammoth Hot Springs
Tourists Going Round Yellowstone Park
-Wild West shows
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Parade
-Wrestling
Wrestling at the New York Athletic Club
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The period from 1894 to 1915 was one in which workers in the United States began
to have more leisure time than their predecessors. One reason for this was that industrial
employers began to decrease working hours and institute a Saturday half-day holiday,
which gave workers more free time for leisure activities. (Other types of workplaces
would soon follow suit.) Vacations began to be regularly offered to workers, although
they were usually unpaid ones. The monotony of specialized industrial work and the
crowding of urban expansion also created a desire in the worker to have leisure time
away from his or her job and away from the bustle of the city. The Progressive movement
was another factor which contributed to the increased value of leisure time for workers,
as their health and well-being received more attention. Yet another factor was the
installation of electric lighting in the city streets, which made nighttime leisure
activities less dangerous for both sexes.
People responded to this increased allowance of free time by attending a variety
of leisure activities both within and away from the city. New types of amusements
that people of all classes and both sexes could attend came into existence and
quickly spread across the country.
Urban Entertainment
Within cities, people attended vaudeville shows, which would feature a multitude
of acts. Shows often ran continuously so that theatergoers could come and go as they
pleased. Vaudeville shows crossed economic and ethnic boundaries, as many different
social groups would mix in the audience. Other popular shows of the time included
circuses and Wild West shows, the most famous of the latter being William F.
"Buffalo Bill" Cody's.
Motion pictures also served as entertainment during leisure time for urban audiences.
Initially the movies were novelties in kinetoscope viewers, until they became acts in
their own right on the vaudeville stage. As motion pictures became longer, they moved
into storefront Nickelodeon theaters and then into even larger theaters.
Further Afield
Outdoor activities remained popular as people attended celebratory parades and
county fairs, the latter featuring agricultural products, machinery, competitions,
and rides.
Some people wished to go further afield on their vacations and leave the city.
Many with limited budgets went to the countryside or the beaches. Towards the
latter part of the nineteenth century, resorts opened in the outskirts of cities,
such as the beach area of Asbury Park in New Jersey, which was founded in 1870.
Amusement parks opened in places like Coney Island, New York, founded in 1897,
offering rides, fun houses, scenes from foreign life, and the latest technological
breakthroughs, such as motion pictures. National parks were created by the federal
government to preserve nature and many began to tour these areas on vacation. One
such example was Yellowstone Park where people camped or stayed at the hotels built
there in the late 1880s.
World's fairs and expositions held in different U.S. cities offered Americans a
chance to "tour the world" in one place. The fairs celebrated progress and featured
exhibits of science and technology, foreign villages, shows, rides and vendors. The
first major one was the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, which was followed
by fairs in Chicago (1893), Atlanta (1895), Nashville (1897), Omaha (1898), Buffalo (1901),
and St. Louis (1904).
Sports
After the Civil War, the popularity of sports as leisure activities grew as people
began to see the importance of exercise to health. While initially only the wealthy
could partake of most sporting events, the opening of publicly available gymnasiums,
courts, and fields allowed the working and middle classes to participate also.
Athletic clubs such as the New York Athletic Club were organized and the YMCAs
began to institute sports programs. These programs mostly focused on track and
field events, instituted by communities of Scottish and English descent, and
gymnastics, heavily influenced by German athletics. Gymnasiums, which featured
exercises using Indian clubs, wooden rings, and dumbbells, were opened in many
Eastern cities.
Although men performed the majority of sports activities at this time,
opportunities for women, too appeared as the nineteenth century ended.
Sports in which women participated included canoeing, rowing, and walking,
although by the turn of the century schools began to offer even more sports activities
for females, such as gymnastics and basketball.
Spectator sports became popular as people flocked to see boxing rounds and
different types of races. Although boxing was initially frowned on because of
the violence and gambling associated with it, by the 1890s the Marquis of Queensberry's
code was adopted, imposing limits on the game which made the sport somewhat safer.
Its adoption in athletic clubs, YMCAs, and colleges by the early twentieth century
brought boxing a measure of respectability.
Horse racing had always been supported by the wealthy and gamblers; by the
end of the nineteenth century, people of all classes attended races. Although
yacht races were also initially more popular for the wealthy, the America's
Cup series of racing, begun in 1870, increased the sport's appeal. Other
types of races which were popular included rowing, sailing, auto boat, and automobile
races, the last category beginning in the 1890s.
Sports which involved teamwork, such as baseball, basketball, and football,
became wildly popular with Americans, who enjoyed the games both as participants
and spectators. Baseball had its origins in the English games of rounders and
cricket and started as an adult game in New York during the 1840s. By the 1850s,
the sport rapidly spread to many parts of the country as teams were formed from
all classes and ages of society. Baseball rapidly became more organized as it
became America's favorite sport.
Derived from the English game of rugby, American football was started in
1879 with rules instituted by Walter Camp, player and coach at Yale University.
Basketball derived from the need for an indoor sport during the winter months.
James Nasmith, an instructor at the YMCA Training School at Springfield, Massachusetts,
devised the game in 1891. Soon YMCAs and colleges around the country began playing it.
The game was adapted for women at schools around the country with differing rules in the
1890s, until in 1899 a standard set of rules for women were adopted.
Other sporting activities which people performed during this time included roller
skating, bicycling, swimming, ice skating, sleighing, hunting, and fishing.
First invented in 1863, roller skating became a fad in the 1880s. Improved skates
revived the trend by the turn of the century, making it fashionable for the middle
classes and also for women.
Bicycling became popular in the 1880s, and the introduction of safer bicycles the
following decade increased interest in the sport.
Swimming rapidly became more popular in the latter part of the century as women
were increasingly allowed to swim in mixed company. Swimming began to be seen as
an acceptable sport for women.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, urban men in the East sought the
outdoors for their sports activities, indulging in hunting and fishing. Anglers'
clubs abounded as the sport of fishing grew in popularity.
Winter sports, such as sleighing and ice skating, also gained in popularity in
the mid-nineteenth century.
The films in this collection offer ample evidence of many of the activities
mentioned. Film audiences of the time would have been amused to see other
people or themselves on the screen, out enjoying their leisure time. For
today's viewer, these films are historical documents of how Americans spent
their leisure moments a hundred years ago, and how activities which are
still enjoyed today began.
[Sources for essay: see Selected Bibliography.]
NOTE: Film titles used in this presentation are the original production titles, which
may include archaic or incorrect spellings.
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