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darryn
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| Posted: 17 May 2007 at 12:23pm | IP Logged
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The new exhibit of Norumbega Park opened at the Newton Museum inside the Jackson Homestead in Newton on Thursday, April 26,2007.
Come view the new exhibit at the Museum: In the late 19th century, Norumbega Park offered Bostonians a "trolley ride to the country." Relive carnival rides, canoeing and moonlit strolls, in a place where people were "happy continually."
Museum Hours
Tuesday-Friday, 11 AM to 5 PM
Saturday and Sunday, 12 Noon to 5 PM
Closed Mondays and major holidays
Admission
Adults $5.00; Children/Seniors $3.00; AAA Members, 2 for 1; Newton Residents: Adults $2.00; Children/Seniors $1.00; Newton Historical Society Members: Free
Address
The Newton History Museum at the Jackson Homestead
527 Washington St.
Newton, MA 02458
Telephone: 617-796-1450
Fax: 617-552-7228
Directions
The Newton History Museum is located at the corner of Washington Street and Jackson Road, between Newton Corner and Newtonville.
Click Here to visit the official Newton History Museum
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darryn
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| Posted: 17 May 2007 at 12:44pm | IP Logged
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By Rachel Lebeaux/Staff Writer
Newton Tab/GateHouse Media
Wed Apr 25, 2007
Newton’s own ‘famous pleasure resort’
The Charles River-side plot of land near the Route 128 egress is best known today as the location of the Marriott Hotel, but a new exhibit encourages people to think back to a time when that spot was the area's most popular amusement park, when canoeing was king and kissing was controversial.
The Newton History Museum's exhibit, "Norumbega: Romance and Recreation by the River," represents "a very nostalgic topic, very colorful and exciting," said curator Susan Abele.
Through photographs, drawings, postcards, advertisements and even some old-time props, the exhibit illustrates the pleasures that drew masses to the park for more than 60 years.
Norumbega Park, at Auburndale on the Charles, "was an invention of the railway company," Abele said. "They were trying to maximum the use of electrical services and maximize ridership."
As it turned out, "the park ended up much more popular than the railway in the long run," Abele said.
The railway came down the center of Commonwealth Avenue, which was called "Newton's Crown of Beauty" when it opened in 1896. The line started at Lake Street in Brighton, near Boston College, and could be accessed via Park Street station in downtown Boston.
The park opened in 1897 and offered canoeing, a zoological garden complete with lions, leopards and bison, a merry-go-round, picnic spots, a restaurant, a 3,500-seat rustic theater for vaudeville and opera and plenty of open space for walking around.
Abele said that 12,000 people flocked to the park on opening day. Admission cost only a nickel, and visitors could buy a combination ticket with the trolley.
The exhibit has numerous photographs, drawings and postcards showing pleasure-seekers soaking in all that Norumbega Park had to offer.
There is also a model trolley, like those that transported people to the park. "Imagine breezing around on a summer day with the open car — it was a lot of fun," Abele said.
The Victorians were prone to hyperbole. Early advertisements tout the park as a "perfect place" and "Boston's famous pleasure resort" where people were "happy continually."
Canoeing along the Charles River became a popular pastime as well. Poets extolled the river's virtues, comparing it to the Seine and the Rhine, and more than 5,000 canoes were said to be on the river between Waltham and Newton Lower Falls around the turn of the century.
"If a man had a canoe, it was a big deal — that was his vehicle," Abele said.
But canoeing came at a cost for some canoodling couples.
From 1903 to 1905, 37 couples were arrested for kissing in canoes. The advent of the canoe "was a huge shift in couples' courting behavior," Abele explained, "leading up to cars.
"It was thought that the inner-city folks were doing this, but it was more middle-class young people — not the riff-raff," Abele said.
Boathouse owners around Norumbega cited a 50 percent loss of business as many took their canoes to the less strictly regulated waters of Dedham.
The park almost closed in 1918 during World War I but managed to survive and thrive where others, like its sister park in Lexington, floundered.
A grand steel theater replaced the rustic theater after it burned; in 1930, the space opened as the Totem Pole Ballroom. Over time, it came to be known as "America's most beautiful ballroom" and the host to numerous big-band musical performances, dances, first dates and wedding proposals.
"Everyone of a certain age who grew up around here went there," Abele said.
New attractions during the 1920s and 1930s included a 70-foot Ferris wheel, the Tumble Bug and early bumper cars.
"The idea of the rides is that they jostled young couples together," Abele said. "The goal was to bring people in contact, to make you laugh and giggle."
In 1938, a man named Roy Gill bought the park and instituted strict no-liquor and couples-only policies, as well as a dress code. But that didn't take away from the appeal.
The trolley was, by this point, a relic of the past, but hordes still escaped to the pleasure park via buses and trains.
An ad in the 1950s proclaimed, "All roads lead to Norumbega Park, via the new route 128 superhighway!" which opened in 1951.
Sadly, the park's days soon came to a close. Gill sold the park in 1956, people weren't flocking there the way they used to and the land's value could no longer be ignored. The park closed Labor Day 1963, the ballroom the following February. Fires destroyed some of the beloved buildings. Marriott bought the land in an auction and opened the hotel in 1970.
Abele credits Robert Pollack, who grew up in Newton and passed away in 2004, with carefully documenting and providing the museum with many of the exhibit's artifacts.
Abele hopes the exhibit will communicate "how much the river meant to all of this, and why it should be maintained."
As for the park itself, perhaps no description can live up to the hyperbole of its glory days. Said Abele simply, "It was an extraordinary place."
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darryn
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| Posted: 01 October 2008 at 1:14pm | IP Logged
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By Rachel Lebeaux
Globe Correspondent / September 14, 2008
For Your Amusement
Fan reaches online for memories of long-closed Norumbega Park
When Darryn Carroll was a boy growing up in Newton's Auburndale section, his father would take him for walks along the Charles River and describe a lost piece of New England history: Norumbega Park.
Norumbega Park opened in June 1897 in the Auburndale section of Newton. The amusement park was built by the directors of the Commonwealth Avenue Street Railway to increase patronage and revenues on the trolley line running into Boston.
"Auburndale-on-the- Charles" featured canoeing, picnic areas, an outdoor theater, a penny arcade, a restaurant, a zoological garden with lions, leopards and bison, and a carousel.
New attractions and rides were added frequently through the 1920s. In 1930, the Great Steel Theatre at Norumbega was converted into the Totem Pole Ballroom, which played host to virtually every major swing band of the era.
Norumbega's gates closed forever on Labor Day, 1963. The Totem Pole closed five months later, on Feb. 8, 1964. Fires destroyed some of the buildings. Marriott bought a large part of the land in an auction and opened a hotel there in 1970.
At the river's edge, where the Boston Marriott Newton hotel now stands, had sprawled an amusement park complete with rides, exotic animals, canoeing and one of America's best-known ballrooms. Norumbega Park closed in 1963, the year before Carroll was born, but he never forgot his father's tales of its nearly seven-decade run.
"I can't explain the romance of the old park," Carroll said. "The guys went there in a suit, and everyone went in canoes."
After his father, John, died in 2001, "I had the sudden urge to do something in his memory," Carroll said. "I remember how he often talked about his time working at the park. He would often talk about how simple life was then, and how he looked forward to every time he went to work."
Carroll's tribute to his father and to Norumbega took the form of a website, norumbegapark.com, which he launched last year to provide those who visited or worked there in its heyday the opportunity to collaborate on a living narrative detailing its history.
He is not alone in his fascination with a time when "staycations" were the norm, and attractions ranging from fried dough and photo booths to big-band stars and a live leopard beckoned just a trolley ride away.
An exhibition at the Newton History Museum, "Norumbega: Romance and Recreation by the River," recalls the history of this "famous pleasure resort" - as early ads touted it - through photographs, drawings, postcards, advertisements, and artifacts, including a model trolley like those that transported people to the park.
"Norumbega Park is such a point of nostalgia for people," said Susan Abele, the museum's curator of manuscripts and photographs. The museum recently hosted a guided tour of the former grounds, some of which is now parkland, Abele said. For those who danced at the Totem Pole Ballroom or rode the Ferris wheel, she said, "it really brings back lots of wonderful memories."
The recreational complex was an invention of the Commonwealth Avenue Street Railway, which was trying to increase ridership along its trolley line. The park opened in 1897 and boasted a zoological garden with lions, leopards, and bison, along with rides, a restaurant, a rustic theater, canoeing, and open space for walking and picnics, according to the Newton History Museum.
About 12,000 people came to the park on opening day, and it remained popular through the years, even when others, like its sister park in Lexington, shut down during World War I.
Canoeing along the Charles River became popular; the boats filled the river between Newton Lower Falls and Waltham in the early 20th century. The year 1930 saw the opening of the Totem Pole Ballroom, which would come to host the era's leading big-band performers.
Now, it's up to local historians to keep the spirit of the park alive for new generations.
"It has been interesting and quite a rewarding feeling when visitors send their pictures and stories of the park," said Carroll, an auto mechanic now living in Norwood who writes books and designs websites in his free time.
"I'm always thinking that, when that generation of people passes away, there will be nobody who has that history of the park," Carroll said. On his website, he said, "people can enter a story or upload their own photos of their park. I want to see people writing about how they met their wife at the park. And pictures, pictures, pictures."
Carroll said his website has had more than 8,000 visitors since its launch, and he continues to try to make it as interactive as possible. It has also brought him into contact with another Norumbega historian, Joe Hunter, who worked with the late Bob Pollack to produce "Return to Norumbega," a DVD chronicling the park's history.
"It's good for people to be able to connect to the past," said Hunter, who is director of communication and assistant vice president of external relations at Olin College in Needham. "There are a lot of people around today who visited Norumbega and have a lot of warm memories of the park and the Totem Pole Ballroom."
Hunter, a West Newton resident, was born in West Virginia and never visited Norumbega when it was an amusement park. His interest in local history spurred him to seek out the Newton History Museum, which connected him with Pollack, an authority on Norumbega who collected pictures and memorabilia prior to his death in 2004. Pollack wrote the script for the DVD, which Hunter completed in 2005.
"It's always best when people can make a personal connection with history, and this was one of those projects where it was really possible," Hunter said. "If you're over a certain age and were raised in Massachusetts, you probably went to Norumbega at some point."
In the second half of the last century, an emerging highway system sounded the death knell for Norumbega Park.
The Newton History Museum's exhibition includes a 1950s ad proclaiming, "All roads lead to Norumbega Park, via the new Route 128 superhighway!" But the same road that Norumbega's owners hoped would bring more people to the park actually decreased its numbers, as area residents seized the opportunity to head out of the Boston area for summer activities.
The park closed on Labor Day in 1963; the Totem Pole ballroom closed the following February, and fires would destroy some of the buildings. Marriott bought a large part of the land in an auction and opened its hotel in 1970.
"It's a little ironic that the park was done in by the car and the television - people had other amusement options," Hunter said. "But now, we're again beginning to recognize the value of local places for entertainment."
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
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Topic: Norumbega Exhibit at Newton Musem
