Time was, American vacations were
“see-and-be-seen” affairs in which people of all social classes mixed in immense public spaces – hotels, parks and casinos.
But that changed with the privatization and
commercialization that came with the rise of capitalism in the late
19th century. In Newport, exclusive and
lavish “cottages” of the wealthy
replaced the grand hotels and public spaces. Meanwhile, in
Coney Island, savvy marketers shifted the resort's focus to
offer amusement for the masses, selling leisure as a commodity.
Then there's Saratoga Springs, relatively
unchanged since the early 1800s when Gideon Putnam's grand hotels
tapped into the popularity of the mineral water spas. Today, more than
50 years after the hugely successful Grand Union and U.S. hotels
were demolished, the city still boasts what Henry James lambasted
in an 1870 travel sketch as “a momentous spectacle:
the democratization of elegance.”
That democratized elegance is precisely what makes
Saratoga Springs so special, according to Jon Sterngass, author of
First Resorts: Pursuing Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport
and Coney Island (Johns Hopkins University Press). The
374-page book is an unusual multi-site historical study spanning
a century of American leisure at the Northeast's best-known
playgrounds.
“There has been a gradual loss of public space in
America,” says Sterngass, visiting assistant professor of history. “We used
to hang out in the street and play in the park. Saratoga – with
its racetracks, parks and performance spaces – has retained
the sense of public space that was unique in the last century.”
Take Saratoga's famed racetrack, for example. “You
have the Vanderbilts and the Whitneys next to all these guys
from Yonkers Raceway and they're all peeling off bills and betting on
the horses,” says Sterngass. Too, the Saratoga Performing Arts
Center takes a democratic approach: “You'll have the ballet one
night and Dave Matthews the next.”
“There's no place like Saratoga,” says Sterngass,
himself a proud resident of the city since 1993. “It's a magical place
where anything can happen,” Sterngass says, referring the track's
reputation as a graveyard of favorites.
Sterngass grew up in Brooklyn, making regular trips
to Coney Island and Broadway shows. His book also has
its roots in the 13 summers he spent as a camper and counselor
at Camp Boiberik outside of Rhinebeck, where he “learned
the pleasures of unusual rituals enacted in a setting far away
from home.”
Later, while he pursued his master's degree from the
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and his Ph.D. from City University
of New York, he became fascinated with the idea of a vacation being
a kind of secular pilgrimage. “In every culture there is a kind
of pilgrimage that is outside the ordinary, the mundane,
the everyday. There's still that yearning, that tremendous
drive for a break.”
So, what is Sterngass' ideal vacation? Certainly not
Disney with all its trappings of commercialism, he says. “I'm
repressed,” he admits. “I'm not like the
people in the book who sit out on the porches. I like to travel
along reading about the history of places and talking with my wife.”