Amusement Parks in America in the 1890s

Paper Summary:

This paper offers a close look at how U.S. families were learning to enjoy their leisure time in the 1890s, leisureliness being a luxury that citizens of the early and mid-19th Century, for the most part, were not able to experience. In this paper, the amusement parks of the late 19th Century are reviewed as to what they offered and how people responded to them. The paper also covers the events of the times, important people of the times, as a way to put American leisure experiences into historical context.

From the Paper:

"In the years just before the dawn of the 20th Century, America was going through dramatic cultural, social, political and economic changes. The Industrial Revolution was reshaping the way Americans worked and played; an emerging "mass culture" was creating a "cultural upheaval" as mentioned in the John F. Kasson book, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. This upheaval was driven in part by technological innovations (affordable books, magazines, photographs, lithographs, the invention of the telephone, phonograph) in communication, which opened the door to a new way of living " for a new generation of Americans it was a distinct departure from ?genteel respectability" (Kasson, 6)."

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