The year 1861 was a pivotal one for the American people. Abraham Lincoln took office as the country's sixteenth President and the Civil War began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter. However, on Christmas Day of that year in Brooklyn, the din of the world was forgotten for a few hours in Brooklyn when the Union Skating Association Of East Brooklyn opened its lavish skating pond for business.
Located on the corner of Marcy and Rutledge Avenues, the five-acre, members-only skating pond was founded by Jeremiah Johnson. Would-be skaters were required to bring "satisfactory references" and spaces were limited. Skating tickets cost men over sixteen years of age three dollars and women and children one dollar and sixty cents. To put things in perspective, the average annual salary for many skilled workers that year was one hundred dollars if they were lucky, so three dollars for a day of skating was a tidy sum. These prices were set quite intentionally to keep out 'the riffraff" and maintain facilities that were for the time quite lavish.
Under the management of Eugene M. Cammeyer, who took over the club's presidency from Johnson in 1862, the Union Skating Skating Association Of East Brooklyn's pond boasted an on-ice pagoda, a lounge for women who did not skate, houses for the pond's staff and storage, a refreshment saloon, a stable for horses, cloakrooms and a building which rented skates for ten cents an hour. Police monitored the facilities, which were enclosed by a high wooden fence, to make sure no 'undesirables' managed to sneak their way in and disrupt the skating of the well-to-do members. Cammeyer purchased special planes to ensure the ice was always in pristine condition. The December 9, 1883 issue of "Truth" noted that he kept his ice "as smooth as glass and in the very best of order by constant attention, day and night." He later invested in a steam-powered condenser which allowed him to "strengthen the ice with blasts". The ice was illuminated by lanterns at night and there were nightly firework displays. However, the real novelty of the club was its "Strephilation". The December 5, 1862 issue of "The New York Times" described this musical contraption which accompanied skaters as "an instrument on the same plan as a calliope, and is played in the same way, by steam. It has thirty-five keys, and is pronounced to be a very fine instrument."
Etching of the Union Skating Association Of East Brooklyn's 1862 carnival
To the sound of the "Strephilation" on February 10, 1862, the club's members took part in what Irving Brokaw later claimed to be the very first skating carnival in the New York area. Contemporary sources have claimed that an estimated twelve thousand people flocked to the event by horse-drawn trolley cars, making it perhaps the largest participant skating history in American history. This carnival soon became an annual affair, and by February 1902, when the club's high fences and exclusivity had long given way to the masses, over eight thousand spectators crowded the pond to participate in or watch the grand four-hour long affair by the light of the moon and fifty lanterns. Dressed as Yankees, Italian bandits and Spanish cabarellos, the people of Brooklyn rejoiced in the magic of skating. The February 4, 1902 issue of "The New York Herald" noted, "Polkas, schottisches, etc. were gone through with on skates with an agility and ease wonderful to those who were not adept with the healthful art. The ladies appeared to enjoy the sport to their hearts' content, and their merry laughs were continually heard ringing over the pond as their fair companions, unsophisticated in the gliding process, came to the ice and were lifted gallantly therefrom by their gay cavaliers. The fun and frolic were kept up to a late hour, after which the Union Skating Club gave a supper to a few invited guests."
However, things weren't always rosy behind the scenes at the Union Skating Association Of East Brooklyn. The financial success of the club prompted other local skating ponds to up their game with better facilities and ice conditions. Facing stiff competition from Hugh Mitchell and Alexander MacMillan's pond at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue and the old Beekman Pond in Central Park, the Union Skating Association Of East Brooklyn lost many members over the years. In March 1874, Cammeyer ended up filing for bankruptcy and found himself in some legal hot water over a fraudulent mortgage of some sort. I don't speak legalese mumbo jumbo, but give it a Google if you like. It doesn't sound too pretty.
On February 12, 1879, hundreds of masked and costumed skaters took to the ice at Madison Square Garden for a skating carnival that may not have overshadowed the Union Skating Association Of East Brooklyn's 1862 carnival in numbers but certainly eclipsed the previous effort in novelty... for it was the first ice carnival staged in America on artificial ice. Accompanied by Gilmore's Serenade Band, members of New York and Empire Skating Club issued a joint statement paying tribute to Thomas I. Rankin for "Creating this, the first large sheet of artificial ice ever made by man and maintained in a temperature above freezing." By the first decade of the twentieth century, the St. Nicholas Rink at 66th Street and Ninth Avenue had firmly established itself as the go-to skating spot in the New York area and the days of exclusivity at the Union Skating Pond were but a dated memory. Although the Union Skating Association Of East Brooklyn started with a bang during the first year of the Civil War, it ultimately lost the battle.
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