[Rarebooks] FS: 1860s Narragansett Bay Disreputable Watering Place

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

 From our new Recent Acquisitions catalog:
<http://www.joslinhall.com/Catalog374.pdf>


34.  [Watering Place]  1860s Narragansett Bay Disreputable Watering 
Place Card.

A card for Mark Rock, “This Beautiful Watering Place, situated on the 
Narragansett Bay, Being only six miles from Providence, R.I., is easily 
accessible by land or water. Families & Private Parties accommodated at 
short notice”. The Warwick Rhode Island website has a somewhat less 
flattering description of the hotel, which was built in the early 1850s- 
“During the mid-19th century, steamboats cruising along the Bay were 
enchanted with Warwick’s shoreline and the desire to establish shore 
resorts came into vogue. While Rocky Point, established by Capt. William 
Winslow in 1847, was the most well-known and largest shore attraction in 
the area, resorts were also founded in and around Conimicut. Mark Rock, 
north of Conimicut Point, near the present day Rock Avenue, was the most 
notorious for many years. The Mark Rock Hotel, like the Longmeadow Hotel 
south of Conimicut Point, catered for the most part to transient 
visitors in the late 19th century. Unlike Rocky Point, it never 
attempted to become a “rich man’s resort” or an amusement park, but 
rather developed into a drinking and gambling mecca. The Mark Rock Hotel 
was located near a large, flat rock which archeologists believed bore 
indications of Indian, or perhaps Scandinavian, hieroglyphics. 
Steamboats from Providence stopped at the dock near the hotel and 
unloaded its group of merrymakers. According to newspaper reports of the 
time, the patrons of the Conimicut resort were ‘thoroughly 
disreputable.’ The excursion boat from Providence brought its passengers 
to Mark Rock early on Sunday morning and came back in the evening to 
gather its patrons after a full day of ‘carousing.’ It was common, we 
are told, for a detachment of Providence police to meet the returning 
boat to arrest the ‘brawling, intoxicated revelers as they disembarked 
at the wharf’.”

3.5”x2.25”. Minor soil, light wear.  [43131]  $65

Pictures ->
<http://www.joslinhall.com/Catalog374.pdf>



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