SOURCE: Pleasures Simpler Back Then, But Taken Seriously, by John Coombes,
Columbus Ledger – Enquirer, May 28, 1961.
Rowing on the river or dancing at the Villa Reich, dressing elegantly for the race, or one of Miss Duck's famed soirees, Columbus folks of the 1880's took their pleasures seriously and vigorously. Then, as now, there were plenty of pastimes to occupy leisure time in Columbus summer or winter, and in those days a lot less hard-won leisure was fritted away in idleness. Tastes in amusements and recreation were probably simpler, nevertheless Columbusites threw themselves wholeheartedly into the spirit of their chosen pastimes.
Picnics Top Pastime
Picnicking was one of the principal spring and summer pastimes in Columbus in the 1880's. Every club, association, business house and church had at least one picnic a year. In the city Lovers' Leap and Wildwood Park were the most popular spots. Wildwood also attracted picnic parties from as far away as Stewart and Meriwether counties. On out-of-town picnics Columbusites clambered aboard special trains, chartered from one of the seven or more railroads serving the city in the 1880's, and journeyed as far as their pocketbook or appetite permitted.
The mills closed down at least once a year for all-day staff picnics. These were often enormous affairs, with several mills joining in one huge, outdoor spree. For one held at Nebula, on the Georgia, Midland and Gulf Railroad route, in May 1887, eight committees had worked for weeks planning dancing, amusements, refreshments, swings, music, baskets, lemonade and "regulations" for the many hundreds who attended.
The L'Allegro Club, 150 young Columbus people, heavily chaperoned, favored Warm Springs for its first picnic of the season, and the First Baptist Church Sunday School went to Cold Springs for its annual outdoor festivities. There, members were entertained by a brass band, an exponent of 'sleight-of-hand' and a Punch and Judy show. Kingsboro, Pine Mountain, Coosa River, Juniper, Box Springs and Gray's Springs all reached by railroad were the favorite picnic sites that year.
Trek to Resorts
Columbus people have always been a restless lot. They travelled the Southern and Western states and toured Europe, but in the 1880's, and through the 1920's they preferred to go to one place and stay there all summer long. Warm Springs was the favorite summer habitat of the city's more prosperous families. White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia attracted the wealthy, and the very wealthy went to Saratoga Springs or Baden Baden.
The healing properties of the waters at these spas were still taken for granted and dozens of Columbus families moved to Warm Springs for the summer, father com muting to his mill, bank or cotton business by train each morning. They took their entertainment with them. Mike Rose, the city's most popular orchestra leader at that time, moved his musicians into specially prepared cottages in the grounds of the old Warm Springs Hotel. They played during luncheon at the hotel each day and on Saturday night provided the music for a ball that attracted most of the eligible bachelors in the state.
For those who stayed home there were picnics and family reunions. Tennis, which had come to Columbus from the Eastern seaboard began to be popular in polite circles. People weren't so fussy about their tennis costumes then nor so demanding about the condition of the court. Some of the early "courts" at the city's wealthier homes would be dismissed as dirt patches today. And dark blue veils were standard equipment for women players in the days before a suntan was something to be admired.
Columbus' Korsal
For many years the Villa Reich (pictured below) was the hub of social activities in Columbus. It was probably the first public entertainment palace in the city. Later the hotels added ballrooms and salons for entertainment but before Frederick Reich built his "Korsal" in Columbus, dances, balls and receptions were held in private homes. After the two-story entertainment palace, modelled on the famed "Korsal" at Bad-Nauheim, was built on the spacious Reich property between Fifth and Sixth Streets it was the city's principal social venue.
For more than a decade it was the site for every memorable ball, recital and amateur theatrical production. It accommodated the Columbus Athletic Club, which then boasted one of the best equipped gymnasiums in the country, a calisthenics school and, from time to time, the famed soirees of Miss Duck, reputedly the most popular dancing teacher this city ever had.
When Reich died the villa was closed as a place of amusement and social galas were held in the ballrooms of the Rankin or Vernon hotels. There, under the watchful eyes of mothers and maiden ladies, who took turns at chaperoning, the city's younger social set attended germans and cotillions called by Macon Barrie. No alcohol was served, and beaus were required to break in on any drinker dancing with the girls. The alcoholic consumption of the young ladies themselves in those days was limited to a glass of hot, spiced wine at Thanksgiving and a few glasses of egg nogg at Christmas.
Columbus ladies of the 1870's and the early 1880's led very sheltered lives. The Victorian ideal of perfect womanhood grew and flourished here. Daughters were concerned with the finer things of life-social amenities, travel, the arts; seldom sat with folded hands. They had certain accomplishments which they practiced playing a musical instrument, painting watercolors, china painting and various other handcrafts.
The Bicycle Craze
In the late 1880's however the age of the "outdoor girl" began to dawn in Columbus and in bringing women out of the house to compete in outdoor sports with men nothing succeeded like the bicycle craze.
The bicycle had first appeared in the city in the mid-seventies, but it was then a formidable machine which towered in the air and required something of a gymnast to mount it. Most Columbus women were far too scared even to try it. When the "safety" bicycle with its two wheels of equal and moderate size and its light pneumatic tires appeared, the ladies took it up eagerly and there was considerable debate among grandmothers and mammas about the propriety of a divided skirt or bloomers.
Bicycle clubs by the dozen were organized and on Saturday mornings scores of young men and women pedaled out to Wildwood Park to eat lunch under the watchful eyes of chaperones, most of whom were too advanced in years and dignity to ride bicycles and had driven out to the picnic site in buggies. For the romantically inclined there was a great deal to be said for those early bicycle clubs. But their membership waned with the employment of chaperones who could pedal as hard as their charges.
Oyster Roasts
The few downtown clubs of old Columbus were strictly male preserves. In their comfortable lounges and smoking rooms bankers, millowners and a few wealthy men of broader business interests played cards and talked cotton, money and politics or played politics and talked cards, money and cotton.
The most influential of these clubs - The Muscogee Club (pictured below) - occasionally opened its doors to members' ladies. Three or four times a year the club invited members' wives and daughters and their friends for a german or a cotillion. But it was more famed for its oyster roasts, held in the basement of the club and also open to members' families.
The oyster roast of 1886 occupied the place the barbecue was to take later on the city's social calendar. Barbecues in the 1880's were almost exclusively plantation affairs. Muscogee oyster roasts began shortly before noon. Several barrels of oysters fresh from Apalachicola were roasted on brick-grills in the club basement. The sauces were the handiwork of the younger club members, one in particular W. J. Wood, who some years before had concocted a dressing which had so pleased guests' palates it had won renown as far south as Florida. Thereafter oyster roasts were arranged only on those days when the inimitable Wood was available to prepare the hot sauce.
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