America's Gilded Age Built the Mt. Washington Hotel

On Saturday I went cross country skiing at Bretton Woods which is partly on the property of the Mt. Washington Hotel.  The Hotel is off Route 302 in the New Hampshire White Mountains.  It was built by Joseph Stickney, a railroad tycoon who spared no expense in building a hotel "palace" in the middle of the mountains.  It was started in 1900 and finished in 1903.  A year later, Stickney died at the age of 64.  Follow the link to a blog and learn more about the hotel and see pictures of it's gilded opulence, even today, thanks to a restoration   The Distracted Wanderer on the Mt.Washington Hotel.  Many say we are living in a second gilded age. What do you think?  Can you give examples of a project of this magnitude today? 

America’s Gilded Age 1870-1890: The Industrial Economy - Railroads

                                                            This is me back in 2013

In the picture above, is a beautiful biking path that runs through Saugus and will extend to neighboring towns and cities such as Lynn, Revere, Malden, and Everett. Just within the last few years the town had agreed upon digging out old railroad tracks that had been running through there for centuries and filling it with granular recycled asphalt. I had actually moved out of Saugus a couple of years before this took place and remembered the railroads that had run across main streets which are completely gone now.

This asphalt path that had opened up in 2012 is now known as the Northern Strand Community Trail where formerly the Saugus Branch Railroad had once ran through for the most part. The Saugus Branch Railroad was in service from 1853-1958 and serviced the same towns and cities as the current trail.  In describing the Saugus Branch I quote historian Francis B. C. Bradlee regarding the railroad as "one of the few fortunate investments of the Eastern… it was probably one of the best paying stretches of railroad in New England.”  The site also mentions in 1869 “there were fourteen passenger trips a day.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saugus_Branch_Railroad) From reading our class textbook, I found it interesting that the railroad transition is sometimes referred to as the “second industrial revolution” (P.586).  Thinking about what life would have been like back then I can see why this took off so quickly.  It truly was the first mass means of transportation across the country not including boats or ferries. I don’t believe the public had access to airplanes. They certainly didn’t have as easy of an access to cars like we do today.  It’s like going from no computer to computer or black to color television and so forth.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Strand_Community_Trail

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saugus_Branch_Railroad

Foner, Eric. "Chapter 16." Give Me Liberty An American History. 3rd ed. Vol. 2.  

Reconstruction: The Grand Army of the Republic and the Museum in Lynn

G.A.R. Burial Ground, Pine Grove Cemetery, Lynn, MA. Thary Sun Lim

G.A.R. Museum, 58 Andrews Street, Lynn MA

The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R) was formed by Civil War Veterans in 1866.  The first post was in Decatur, Illinois, but the G.A.R grew rapidly to over 7000 posts all over the U.S.; some with a dozen members, some large posts with over one thousand members.  The Lynn, MA post, General Frederick W. Lander Post No. 5, was one of the larger posts with 2,000 members at the height of it's membership.  (Note in my video I mistakenly state that Lynn membership was a half million, that was the national number).  

The G.A.R. motto was Fraternity, Charity and Loyalty and the organization grew to accomplish all three of the virtues in their motto.   They built soldiers homes and helped wounded veterans, widows and orphans with their charity. The G.A.R became the nation's most powerful advocacy organization, able to elect or defeat U.S. presidential candidates and the G.A.R. successfully lobbied to pass significant pension benefits legislation for Civil War Veterans in 1890.  At that point their membership numbers had grown to almost a half-million.  They also erected buildings, monuments and memorials to veterans and the war all over the country.  Can you find a G.A.R. building or monument in your town or city?  If you do, take a picture of it and post it up on the blog.

The national G.A.R. elected a Commander-in-Chief every two years and in 1893 the Commander-in-Chief was John G.B. Adams of Lynn.  This was one of the most powerful period's of the G.A.R.'s existence and it attests to the economic and political power-house that Lynn was at that time. 

By 1919 the members of the Lynn Post were quickly passing away.  The Lynn Post petitioned the state legislature for a special act to hand over the post as a museum to the City of Lynn.  The special act was passed and Lynn voters passed a ballot measure to accept the G.A.R. as a museum of the City of Lynn.  In 1979 The G.A.R. Hall in Lynn was added to the National Register of Historic Places.  

Click on the links below to learn more about the G.A.R. and to see views of the interior of the Lynn Hall.


Library of Congress Introduction to the G.A.R. Collection

Link to Lynn City Site for Panorama View of the G.A.R Museum in Lynn, MA

Link to the video I took in front of the G.A.R. in Lynn