Two recent columns of \u201cYour Town and My Town\u201d have been devoted to a review of a quaint old book, \u201cThe Old Main Line,\u201d as written by J.W. Townsend 1919. This week\u2019s column will deal with outdoor sports, although they were practically non-existent then as compared to their present day form.<\/p>\n
Back in the 60\u2019s, according to Mr. Townsend, football, basketball, hockey, golf, squash and tennis were still unknown. In the late 60\u2019s, \u201ca so-called bicycle appeared\u2026 the rider sat on top of a wheel about five feet high with a little wheel to steady it. Woe to him if he struck a stone, as he took \u2018a high header\u2019\u2026 a man was indeed killed in this way on Lancaster Pike. When the present form of bicycle came years later, with low wheels and rubber tires, they were called \u2018safeties.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cTennis did not appear until the late 70’s, and although baseball was played in some places it was little known in the suburbs. Cricket came into existence at about this time\u2026 the Merion Cricket Club had just been organized. Quoits were played occasionally.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the universal game of the 60\u2019s for adults and children was croquet. Hours were devoted to it, and although there was little exercise in it, at least it kept people out-of-doors\u2026 on Sundays the gentle croquet mallets rested peacefully in their box.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying cards were strictly taboo among the Quakers and Presbyterians, who largely predominated in Philadelphia\u2019s social life. Youngsters played parchesi, jackstraws and lotto, while their elders joined in on checkers and backgammon. Billiards and chess were other popular games.<\/p>\n
In the late 70\u2019s, when Louella House, in Wayne, became a summer hotel for Philadelphians under the name of Louella Mansions, its owners issued a little booklet setting forth its attractions. Its Casino contained shuffle-boards, a pool table and gymnasium apparatus. The mansion itself contained library, smoking and music rooms, orchestral music every Saturday evening with extensive room for dancing. So, even in a decade or two, popular summer hotels of the Main Line began to offer more in the way of amusement than did the boarding house of the \u201960\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cCountry summering\u201d was becoming increasingly popular with city folks, as indicated by a small prospectus issued by the railway company in 1874. It listed 54 boarding houses from Overbrook to Downingtown with accommodations for 1,330 \u201cquiet guests,\u201d exclusive of the Bryn Mawr Hotel, which held 250. \u201cThe Main Line showed the first symptoms of getting gay,\u201d writes Mr. Townsend, \u201cwhen the Summit Grove Hotel, in Bryn Mawr, got well under way in the summer of 1873. The Bryn Mawr assemblies were the events of the season, with about 500 people attending each of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther entertainments of the summer were a magic lantern exhibition by Will Struthers; a comic talk by Benjamin Franklin Duane, a mock trial and an Orpheus Club Concert\u2026 It is curious to consider that these functions continued through the whole of hot summers\u2026 Philadelphians had not yet acquired the expensive and unnatural habit of seeking distant climes for cold in summer as well as for heat in winter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Townsend\u2019s account continues, \u201cThe hotel life was quite similar to that of the old boarding houses, only it was gayer and more formal\u2026 In the afternoons nearly everybody drove or rode. Cavalcades of perhaps 25 riders would go out together and explore the country roads for miles around. Women and girls used only sidesaddles\u2026 the Radnor Hunt had not started and little hunting or jumping was indulged in. The roads were all dirt roads except Lancaster Pike, which was very rough and ridgey, without any smooth surfacing. The dirt roads were fine for horseback, but became a foot deep in mud when it rained, and in winter were almost impassable. The old Haverford road that ran through the Whitehall district was then a \u201cplank road,\u201d that is, one half of it had boards laid close together, unpleasant to ride on but a great boon in muddy weather.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Bryn Mawr tract was laid out, its avenues were covered with a coarse gravel, which made for very slow travel. These roads exasperated Mr. Cassatt, vice-president of the railroad who was fond of driving his four-in-hand coach. He accepted the position of Township Road Supervisor and was instrumental in obtaining macadamized roadbeds. He also got a company of his friends to buy Lancaster pike as far as Paoli and to make a macadamized road of it. Toll was charged to keep it in order and \u201cit was a boon\u201d to the driving public for many years. In later years the toll gates were abolished, when the State bought the Pike and maintained it by taxes.<\/p>\n
Next week’s column continues with more excerpts from Mr. Townsend\u2019s book, in particular concerning the dress of the Main Line men and women in the 60\u2019s. Other matters to be described range from transportation to lightning rods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two recent columns of \u201cYour Town and My Town\u201d have been devoted to a review of a quaint old book, \u201cThe Old Main Line,\u201d as written by J.W. Townsend 1919. This week\u2019s column will deal with outdoor sports, although they were practically non-existent then as compared to their present day form. Back in the 60\u2019s,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}