Lakewood Park, Waterbury, Ct.

The exhibit focuses on four of Waterbury's larger parks Fulton, Hamilton, Lakewood and Chase and the amusements that took place there, from Flora Dora contests to ice skating races to swimming and basketball competitions to dances beneath the stars. Country retreats, such as Topsmead Park and Naugatuck State Forest, are also included. Organized by curator Ann Y. Smith, who has long had a fascination with the 19th-century spirit of stewardship, it celebrates the philanthropic spirit of industrialists like the Chase, Hamilton and Fulton families who bequeathed hundreds of acres to the city to establish mini-country retreats within the city limits. Why industrialists owned such an enormous percentage of Waterbury's land is still a mystery, but assistant curator Raechel Guest speculates that factory owners were in a mad rush to gobble it up for the timber it offered. Timber and coal fueled most of the metal-making factories in the area.

But as the Industrial Revolution encroached on what were agrarian strongholds, a concomitant nostalgia for rustic rural retreats emerged. Not only were industrialists aware of the havoc they were wreaking on once bucolic sights, they were unnerved by the amount of time spent in the grueling indoor light of factories and office buildings. Increasingly, they sought outdoor retreats, first for themselves and then for the citizens they employed.

The idea of domestic travel began, in part, in response to the country's rapid industrialization. Harboring deep agrarian roots, the country tried to have it both ways; a muscular industrial infrastructure and an idyllic retreat from the same.

"That sense of civic and social responsibility to give something back to the community was a very 19th century concept," says Guest. "There was also this realization that they needed to preserve open space so people who lived in the city could still have a piece of the country and also recreation."

This exhibit will bring back fond memories for those who remember taking the trolley out to Lake Quassapaug or dancing the Charleston in the Roseland Ballroom at Lakewood Park. Irresistible photos of boys in barbershop garb, winners of a barbershop quartet contest at Fulton Park in the 1950s, stand side by side with a chorus of girls holding their precious dolls for a "best doll" contest with an expansive slew of categories.

The city's first "purpose-built" park, established in 1898, was Hamilton Park. Like most of the city's parks, it was donated in memory of a beloved family member, in this case David Hamilton, whose silver mill, Rogers Brothers, was nearby. His widow gave the city an initial 45 acres, and other wealthy families, including Caroline Platt and the Goss family, added to it, more than doubling the size of the park to 92 acres.

The park contained a playground, an ice skating rink, quoit courts, pool and crude zoo with wolves, seals, bears and monkeys. In one incident, a bear bit a boy when the boy acted on a dare to stick his arm in its cage.

But such attractions were not uncommon in parks. Fulton Park, which was donated to Waterbury by Lewis Fulton, of the Waterbury Farrell Foundry, in memory of his son Lewis, included a rose garden, cascading fountain, lily pond and swimming area. Most notably, the 69-acre park was designed by the celebrated and seemingly ubiquitous Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects, which designed Central Park.

But not all parks started as altruistic enterprises. Eugene Jacques was a theater impresario in downtown Waterbury whose Jacques Theater held vaudeville shows. He decided that what went over well inside could do just as well outside and built an open air theater on piers that stood on land he leased at the Great Brook Reservoir. There, visitors could enjoy vaudeville while placing their drink orders with tuxedo-clad waiters.

In 1911, when a group of Waterbury investors bought the 15-acre property and installed a merry-go-round, roller coaster and dance hall, it became a boisterous amusement park and dance hall that was renamed Lakewood Park. Prior Forest Park? (Webmaster)

In a scenario that would become painfully familiar to Waterbury residents, a group of New York investors bought the park in 1926. When they didn't pay their taxes, the city repossessed the park, which declined slowly over the next 25 years, its rides inoperable and famous ballroom torn down. The park might have faded altogether if not for the Chase Co.'s 1958 gift of 101 acres around the reservoir. Today, festivals and sports competitions are held in the popular park. But some parks did not fare as well.

Chase Park, arguably the city's most elegant, was cleaved by the construction of Interstate 84 in the 1960s. Once 35 grandly landscaped acres bequeathed by the Chase family, which included a swimming pool and stunning monument to the Pilgrim Fathers, the park exists only in small pieces of its old grandeur. Still, the images of the park's munificent amusements are stunning. Photo reproductions of Easter egg hunts and St. Patrick's Day parties are wonderful mementos of in many ways a less socially fraught time.