America at Work | America at School | America at 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

Babies Rolling Eggs

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

[Claremont Theatre, N.Y.]

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

A Glimpse of the San Diego Exposition

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.

Basket Ball, Missouri Valley College

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

Canoeing on the Charles River, Boston, Mass.

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.

International Contest for the Heavyweight Championship-Squires vs. Burns

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.

Princeton and Yale Football Game

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.

The Roller Skate Craze

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.

Boys Diving, Honolulu

[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.