RECREATION

Despite what class of people you look at, people from the late 1800s enjoyed many new recreations that were available for everyone. One of the biggest players in the time period of renovations in recreation was Phineas Taylor Barnum, “the greatest American showman to have ever lived”, who put his “oddities” on display in the American Museum in New York City. The middle class of this time found great pleasure in attending the zoo and the circus. The Central Park Zoo in New York City was one of the first zoos to be built. Another form of recreation and enjoyment amongst the classes was the luxury that only the most elite were privileged to attend, performances at the theater. Most widely played at the theater were the works of Shakespeare.

During this time period, the urbanization of society took place as new outlets for leisure and entertainment were developed. Another product of modern innovations in amusement was the creation of motion pictures. The neighborhoods of the working class saw a great growth in the number of movie theaters, especially in New York City. Within just 20 years in NYC, 1000 theatres and “penny arcades”, (fun houses), popped up around neighborhoods, while the number of saloons grew by 2000, to a total of 9000 saloons around the cities. For other forms of entertainment, “glamorous nightclubs” called Cabarets were on the rise to feed the growing hunger of the time for music and dancing in dining situations. Cabarets were mainly a form of entertainment solely for the wealthy.

Along with these changes to the recreational lifestyle, the introduction of taxicabs in urban areas such as New York City provided for a means of transportation, which spurred growth in recreational shopping and the rise of department stores. The evolution of the transportation industry helped to fuel the growing and changing recreational outlets of the society.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/42786/entertainment_of_the_late_1800s.html?cat=37

There is one recreational activity that both the upper and lower classes shared interest in during the late 19th century/ early 20th century- baseball. In the same way that the classes were split in wealth, so were the teams that represented the city (in the sense of who supported the teams) because of the location of the ballparks. New York had the luxury of being home to three major baseball teams. The New York Highlanders (Yankees) played in the uptown borough of Manhattan and so attracted the wealthier, uptown population. Not far from where they played, the Giants, now in San Francisco, played baseball at the Polo Grounds in Harlem (adjacent to where Central Park is now). They attracted more of a mixed crowd, but still catered more to the upper class because of its proximity to Manhattan. The third baseball team played in Brooklyn, which was home to a larger population of blue-collar workers. The Bridegrooms (Dodgers) represented the borough well because of the struggles they faced on the baseball diamond (it correlated to how hard the people of the borough had to work and fight to make it in New York). They traditionally had good teams, but never won the championship during this era. They later became known as the Brooklyn Bums because of their failures, but gave hope to their fans of coming back and winning the championship the following season.