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Chautauqua movement
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US History Encyclopedia:
Chautauqua Movement
The institution that Theodore Roosevelt once called "the most American thing in America" occupies an honored place in American cultural mythology. From its inception in 1874, Chautauqua tailored its appeal to the patriotic, churchgoing, white, native-born, mostly Protestant, northern and Midwestern middle classes—a group whose claim to represent Americans as a whole has been alternatively championed and criticized. "He who does not know Chautauqua," wrote the journalist Frank Bohn in 1926, with knowing irony, "does not know America."
As millions across the nation flocked to Chautauqua's hundreds of summer assemblies and reading circles, few could deny that the Chautauqua movement had emerged as a leading educational, cultural, and political force in American life in the late nineteenth century. By the 1920s, however, the reform impulses of the social gospel and Progressive Era that had shaped Chautauqua's appeal had dissipated. Although no longer a source of new ideas, Chautauqua continued (and continues) to champion the major themes of modern liberal thought in America: humanistic education, religious tolerance, and faith in social progress.
Chautauqua's origins lie in a confluence of sacred and secular forces sweeping across America after the Civil War. Chautauqua's cofounder, John Heyl Vincent, began his career as a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher on the Methodist circuit in the 1850s. By the early 1870s Vincent came to feel that the spiritual awakenings experienced at the "holiness" revivals were too emotional, too superficial. A revitalized and more effective Sunday school, Vincent reasoned, would root evangelical Protestantism in the more solid foundation of biblical learning, secular study, and middle-class prosperity.
In 1873 Vincent joined forces with Lewis Miller, a wealthy manufacturer of farm implements from Akron, Ohio, to find suitable headquarters for their nascent National Sunday School Association. They settled on Fair Point, a cloistered Methodist camp meeting on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in western New York State. The following year, Vincent and Miller forbade impromptu proselytizing and opened Fair Point's doors to both serious students and fun-seeking vacationers—in essence, building on the camp meeting template while transforming it into a semipublic, ecumenical institute and vacation re-treat devoted to teacher training. Vincent and Miller embraced the summer vacation as a fact of modern life and made it an integral part of their broader mission of spiritual and social renewal. They soon abandoned Fair Point and adopted the word "Chautauqua," cleverly hiding its evangelical roots behind an Indian place name.
By the 1880s, Chautauqua had evolved into the fore-most advocate for adult education, sacred and secular. Its eight-week summer program combined Bible study with courses in science, history, literature, and the arts, while giving visibility to social gospel–minded academics, politicians, preachers, prohibitionists, and reformers. Through correspondence courses, university extension, journals like The Chautauquan, and especially reading circles, Chautauqua's influence spread far beyond its campus boundaries. In 1878, Vincent inaugurated the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC). Under the leadership of the director Kate F. Kimball, 264,000 people—three quarters of them women—had enrolled in the CLSC by century's end. Students completing the four-year reading program received official (if symbolic) diplomas. Criticized by some as superficial, the CLSC nevertheless provided opportunities for thousands of mostly white, Protestant, middle-class women to develop stronger public voices and organizational experience.
Many CLSC women worked to establish independent Chautauqua assemblies in their own communities. Independent assemblies developed close ties with local boosters, interurbans, and railroads, who saw them as profitable (yet moral) tourist attractions. By 1900, nearly one hundred towns, mainly in the Midwest, held assemblies on grounds patterned on the original Chautauqua. As assemblies proliferated in the early twentieth century, competition for guests grew fierce, forcing assemblies to hire more popular fare, such as musical acts, theater troupes, and inspirational speakers.
In 1904, the assemblies faced an even greater challenge: for-profit lyceum organizers that year introduced a network of mobile Chautauquas, or "circuits." Competition from circuit Chautauquas forced many independent assemblies to hire lecture bureaus to handle their programming, relinquishing the podium to big-city companies and hastening the assemblies' decline. To modernists like Sinclair Lewis, the circuit Chautauqua, with its "animal and bird educators" (i.e., pet tricks), William Jennings Bryan speeches, sentimental plays, and crude wartime patriotism, symbolized the shallowness of middle-class culture. Despite ridicule from the urban avant-garde, the circuits launched the careers of numerous performers and served as vital links to the outside world for some 6,000 small towns. In the mid-1920s, the rise of commercial radio, movies, automobiles, and an expanded consumer culture signaled the end of the circuits' popularity in rural America. The last tent show folded in 1933.
Although the wider Chautauqua movement was over, the original assembly on Lake Chautauqua thrived. The "Mother Chautauqua," as it was called, expanded steadily until a combination of overbuilding and the Great Depression pushed it to the brink of bankruptcy in 1933. Its survival hung in the balance until a timely gift from John D. Rockefeller returned the institution to sound footing in 1936. No longer a source of much new social or political thought, Chautauqua had discovered a secular principle to sustain it—the need for informed citizenship in modern democracy. Competing perspectives on virtually every major social issue of the twentieth century have at one time or another found their way to the Chautauqua platform. Its nearly utopian aesthetic continued to earn the admiration of urban planners nationwide. In 1989 the grounds were designated a National Historic Landmark.
Bibliography
Bohn, Frank. "America Revealed in Chautauqua." New York Times Magazine, 10 October 1926, 3.
Kett, Joseph F. The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994.
Morrison, Theodore. Chautauqua. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
Rieser, Andrew C. The Chautauqua Moment. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
—Andrew C. Rieser
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Chautauqua movement,
development in adult education somewhat similar to the lyceum movement. It derived from an institution at Chautauqua, N.Y. There, in 1873, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller proposed to a Methodist Episcopal camp meeting that secular as well as religious instruction be included in the summer Sunday-school institute. Established on that basis in 1874, the institute evolved into an eight-week summer program, offering adult courses in the arts, sciences, and humanities. Thousands attended each year; for those who could not, there were courses for home study groups, and lecturers were sent out to supplement the material furnished from the organization's publishing house. Local reading circles flourished around the country.
Other communities were inspired to form local Chautauquas, and possibly 200–300 were organized, though few were so successful as the original. These local groups brought authors, explorers, musicians, and political leaders to lecture and furnished a variety of entertainment. The Chautauquas had something of the spirit of the revival meeting and something of the county fair. In 1912 the movement was organized commercially; lecturers and entertainers were furnished to local groups on a contract basis. This commercial endeavor was extremely successful, persisting until c.1924, after which automobile travel, motion pictures, and other forces rapidly diminished Chautauqua's appeal. The original Chautauqua site continues to draw summer visitors who attend varied programs.
Bibliography
See J. H. Vincent, The Chautauqua Movement (1886, repr. 1971); A. E. Bestor, Chautauqua Publications (1934); R. Richmond, Chautauqua: an American Place (1934); G. MacLaren, Morally We Roll Along (1938); V. Case and R. O. Case, We Called It Culture: The Story of Chautauqua (1948, repr. 1970); J. E. Gould, The Chautauqua Movement (1961).
Wikipedia:
Chautauqua Institution
| Chautauqua Institution Historic District | |
|---|---|
| (U.S. National Historic Landmark District) | |
 Hall of Philosophy
|
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| Location: | Chautauqua, NY |
| Nearest city: | Jamestown |
| Coordinates: | |
| Area: | 2,070 acres (8.3 km²) |
| Built/Founded: | 1874 |
| Architect: | Paul Peltz, Lewis Miller |
| Architectural style(s): | Late Victorian and other late 19th and early 20th-century architectural styles. |
| Designated as NHL: | June 29, 1989 [1] |
| Added to NRHP: | June 19, 1973 [2] |
| NRHP Reference#: | 73001168 |
| Governing body: | Chautauqua Foundation |
The Chautauqua Institution is a non-profit adult education center and summer resort located on 750 acres (3 km²) in Chautauqua, New York, 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Jamestown in the extreme western part of New York State. It was founded in 1874 by inventor Lewis Miller and Methodist Bishop John Heyl Vincent as a camp for Sunday school teachers. The Institution has operated each summer since then, gradually expanding its season length and program offerings organized around the four pillars: arts, education, religion and recreation. In this unique way Chautauqua is much more than a resort; it was originally considered an "assembly" and the assembly model today remains a more descriptive term for Chautauqua's extraordinary community of renewal. It offers a wide range of educational activities to an average of 7,500 people, in residence on any particular day during the season, and another 145,000 during the season attend public events, including popular entertainment, theater, symphony, ballet and opera.
The Institution also includes school of Special Studies, and a residential music program of intensive study is offered to students on the verge of professional careers who audition for admittance into Chautauqua's schools of fine and performing arts.
The physical setting of the Institution defined its development as an assembly. The grounds are situated at a prominent point on the west shoreline of upper Chautauqua Lake, and especially in the early decades of the assembly those who attended met among groves of trees and greenery. The early tent camp assembly gave way to cottages and rooming houses, and then hotels and eventually condominiums. But much of the pastoral summer retreat on the lake survives.
In 1973 the National Park Service recognized the institution's historic importance by adding it to the National Register of Historic Places. In 1989, the Department of the Interior designated it a National Historic Landmark District, consisting of not just the Institution property but all the land between NY 394, the lake and (roughly) Lowell and North avenues.[1],[3],[4]
Institution programs
Summer admission to Chautauqua is by "gate ticket" which allows the purchaser to enjoy the grounds and its village atmosphere, including many 19th-century houses, churches, theaters, pavilions, attractive gardens and the town square, Bestor Plaza, named after Arthur Bestor, president of the institution from 1915 to 1944.
The gate pass also allows use of Smith Memorial Library, including open wireless internet, use of public beaches and parks, and attendance at lectures and concerts. There is an additional charge for some courses, for films shown at the Chautauqua Cinema, for opera and theater tickets, and for use of the golf course and tennis courts.
The official Chautauqua season runs for nine weeks each summer, from late June to late August, though many of the residents arrive as early as May and stay well past Labor Day. Though many of the people living on the grounds have been coming for many years and for multiple generations in their family, the Institution also eagerly seeks to attract those who have never before visited Chautauqua. Newcomers often begin with a stay of a day or two, move on to a week and then come for longer in subsequent years. Chautauqua waives the gate fee for visitors aged 90 and over (It has been facetiously described as "the place where little old ladies go -- and bring their grandmothers.")
Weekly program
A typical weekday at Chatuauqua includes a devotional service and a lecture on a social, political or academic issue in the morning, an afternoon lecture on a religious topic, and an evening program. This evening Amphitheater event may be a symphony concert by the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, a dance program by the Chautauqua Ballet Company, or a program by a special guest artist. Performers this past season included Neil Sedaka, Three Dog Night, and Michael W. Smith. During most weeks, there is at least one opportunity to catch an opera and a play, both put on by Chautauqua's resident summer companies. Operas are performed in English at Norton Hall, a 1930s era art deco structure. There are also regularly scheduled organ recitals, student recitals, master classes, forums, and seminars for the sophisticate.
A range of special studies courses in music, art, dance, drama and general topics are also offered. The Chautauqua Schools of Music offer extremely competitive programs on the basis of scholarship. George Gershwin visited Chautauqua as a summer refuge to compose parts of his Concerto in F in a small wooden piano studio and give its first public performance.
The 10:45 morning lecture program is one of the most distinctive features of the program at the Institution. The program for
each week is built around a unifying theme, such as world events. Chautauqua has been visited by United States Presidents from
Ulysses S. Grant to Bill Clinton, and by other
prominent Americans including Booker T. Washington, Karl Menninger,
Sundays at Chautauqua are rich and full, with many worship services, both denominational and ecumenical. There is an afternoon Amphitheater program, such as a military band or student dance program. On Sundays, entrance to the Institution grounds is free. Worship services are coordinated by the permanent Department of Religion staff and are conducted by prominent protestant ministers.
Special events
There is a special program on the first Tuesday in August called "Old First Night". This is the "birthday party" for the Institution, marking the opening of the first season back in 1874 and serving as an opportunity to whip up spirit for the fund-raising that makes Chautauqua programming possible.
Children's programs
One of the oldest day camps in the United States is the Chautauqua Boys and Girls Club. The Children's School established in 1921, is a developmental preschool for youth ages 3-5, and was a pioneering program in the field of nursery school education. The program includes a social, recreational and educational activities which often incorporate other Chautauqua programs in the areas of music, drama and art.
Institution facilities
The Institution's grounds, located between New York State Route 394 and Chautauqua Lake, include public buildings (such as the 6,000-seat Amphitheater), administrative offices, a library, a movie theater, a bookstore, hotels, condominiums, inns, rooming houses, and many private cottages. There are about 400 year-round residents, but in the summer the population swells as many as 10,000 at any one time. The Institution is largely a pedestrian community, with bikes and scooters seen everywhere and a 12 mph speed limit for cars. There are several parking lots located on the periphery of the grounds.
The Athenaeum Hotel on the grounds is the only hotel actually owned and operated by the Institution. The 156-room hotel, said to be the largest wooden building in the eastern United States, was built in the Second Empire style in 1881. The hotel usually offers complete packages of room, meals at the hotel's dining room, and the Chautauqua gate pass. Although the number of hotel rooms has steadily declined on the grounds in the past thirty years, there has been a corresponding growth in condominiums. A supply of affordable housing remains a challenge on the grounds.
Palestine Park is a relief map of Palestine, showing the general contour of the area, including mountains, valleys, water-courses and cities.
Department of Religion
Chautauqua's Department of Religion provides a wide variety of services of worship and programs that express the Institution's Christian heritage and its interfaith commitment. It provides lectures and educational programs that probe contemporary religious and theological ideas.
The Department of Religion strives to create a climate in which people who cherish various points of view and beliefs can exchange ideas, discuss their differences, and ponder the significance of their diverse experiences and insights.
Chautauqua's impact on adult education
The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC), founded in 1878 by Bishop Vincent, is America's oldest continuously operating book club. It was founded to promote self-learning and study, particularly among those unable to attend higher institutions of learning. Six to nine books are added to the reading list each year, with authors generally coming to Chautauqua to discuss their writing and to talk with readers. Members may graduate from a CLSC class on a special Recognition Day during the summer season after they have paid dues for four years and read any 12 books from the complete CLSC list.
The ideals of the Chautauqua Institution were spread throughout the United States through a number of Independent Chautauqua assemblies, and a series of traveling Circuit Chautauqua assemblies, incorporating many of the program components of the Institution, including lectures, music, nondenominational preaching, and a focus on current issues. Several Independent Chautauquas continue into the 21st century.
External links
- Official site
- The Great Lecture Library
- Chautauqua Foundation, Inc
- Chautauqua Observed - A Critical View
- Maps and aerial photos for Coordinates:
- Maps from WikiMapia, Google Maps, Live Search Maps, Yahoo! Maps, or MapQuest
- Topographic maps from TopoZone or TerraServer-USA
References
- ^ a b Chautauqua Historic District. National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service (2007-09-10).
- ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).
- ^ ["Chautauqua Institution Historic District", by Carolyn Pitts.PDF (784 KB) National Register of Historic Places Registration]. National Park Service (1989-02-14).
- ^ ["Chautauqua Institution Historic District--Accompanying Photos".PDF (2900 KB) National Register of Historic Places Inventory]. National Park Service (1989-02-14).
| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
|---|---|
| History of the National Register of Historic Places · Property types · Historic district · Contributing property |  |
| List of entries National Park Service · National Historic Landmarks · National Battlefields · National Historic Sites · National Historic Parks · National Memorials · National Monuments |
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 | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Chautauqua Institution". Read more |
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