Schenectady, N.Y. (May 17, 2002) –
Jon Sterngass, the author of First Resorts: Pursuing Pleasure at
Saratoga Springs, Newport and Coney Island will give a lecture titled “The Legacy of Saratoga Springs as a Resort Community” on Monday, May 20, at 8 p.m. in the Nott Memorial at Union College.
His talk, sponsored by the College's history department, is free and open to the public. Sterngass also will show a number of prints of Saratoga Springs during the late 1800s.
Sterngass, who teaches history at
Union College, writes that Saratoga Springs is 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,
whose book is an unusual multi-site historical study spanning a century of
American leisure at the Northeast's best-known playgrounds.
For calendar listings:
Speaker: Jon Sterngass, author of First Resorts:
Pursuing Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport and Coney Island
Topic: “The Legacy of Saratoga Springs as a Resort
Community”
Date: Monday, May 20
Time: 8 p.m.
Place: Nott Memorial, Union College.
Cost: Free and open to the public
Information: 388-6131