Parading Around

Mrs. J. E. Safford took second prize in the category of lady drivers. Photo courtesy of Stamford Library

By T.M. Bradshaw

Parades abound in nice weather. Many have patriotic roots, some have religious significance, others are for silly, creative purposes, for seeing and being seen, such as New York City’s Easter Parade, which is not an organized event, but a spontaneous impulse to just show up to show off outfits celebrating spring’s exuberance.

Small town parades have the added attraction of viewers and marchers often knowing each other, some members of the community making an effort to entertain the rest.

On July 7, 1900, the Stamford Recorder reported on a whole day of festivities that had been the focus of the 4th of July celebration, including a baseball game between Stamford and Grand Gorge that the Grand Gorge team won 11 to 7, fireworks, speeches, and appearances by allegorical characters like Uncle Sam and Columbia. The kickoff to the day’s activities was a parade of decorated carriages representing the many hotels and boarding houses, for this was during Stamford’s “Queen of the Catskills” era. At its peak, Stamford had about 40 hotels and boarding houses.

Dr. Stephen E. Churchill was the spark that ignited that development in the late summer of 1871 when he allowed a small party of tourists to stay in the Ladies’ Hall, a dormitory building for Stamford Seminary, the school Churchill was running, for a few days prior to the opening of the school term. (While modernday usage implies an institution for training clergy, seminary can also mean an institute of higher learning, in this case, a high school.) Churchill soon converted the Ladies Hall to a hotel; others with large houses also offered rooms and the rest, as the saying goes, is history, but of course so is this entire story.

Churchill moved the building (a common practice of the era), built others adjacent to it, connected them all with exterior porches and Churchill Hall opened officially as a hotel in July 1883. He built another hotel in a large, park-like structure on the western edge of the village in 1898, the Rexmere, which sadly burned down in 2014.

Guests need to be entertained. On August 29, 1908, Stamford hosted what the newspapers called its first annual “Coaching Parade,” an event not connected to a holiday, but meant to mark the end of the summer boarding season. Locals, summer guests, and businesses decorated vehicles of all types—horse-drawn carriages and wagons, along with automobiles and a few floats that appeared to be vehicles but were actually large constructions powered by people walking or biking inside; a few participants rode on horseback. Imagine something like a miniature Rose Bowl parade. As there had been a Coaching Parade in 1900, it’s not clear why this was deemed a new event.

For two weeks after, the Mirror-Recorder ran columns describing in minute detail the thirty vehicles, their decorations, their occupants, and the list of awards. The float from Mountain View House was decorated as a woodland scene with Ralph S. Wycoff aboard, dressed as Rip Van Winkle accompanied by his dog. The Greenhurst float was for the queen of the yellow flowers, with yellow bunting, ferns, golden glow and golden rod. Ten young ladies rode on it, all dressed in white, with veils and flower wreaths, the queen and her court. A Mr. Thompson produced a fake automobile, the size of a large touring car. Its wooden frame was masked in royal purple trimmed with orange and hid two bicycles; the entire surface was covered with “placards of funny sayings and local jokes, which caused no end of merriment along the line of march.” A Miss Bernice Catherine Brewster rode a tricycle decorated with flowers.

The Atchinson House float appeared to be a boat, with sails that could be raised and lowered. It “was made so real that one could almost see the waves splashing against its sides.” Its occupants were Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty, along with 10 girls dressed in white sailor suits with red collars and sailor caps.

A Miss Venice Robins Lau, a guest at Churchill Hall, drove a pony cart “elaborately decorated, being entirely covered with green ferns and pink roses. The harness and trappings were wrapped in pink to match the roses.The reins were pink ribbons and the pony was decorated with roses to match the cart. The wheels were covered with roses, it requiring nearly 500 to decorate the turnout. The trappings were all wrapped in pink and white, not any portion of them being visible. Miss Lau was dressed in pale green, with a large pink crepe paper hat, trimmed with roses.”

The Ivanhurst float represented a dining room with guests sitting down to dinner, with servers, butler and chef in attendance.

The Coaching Parade continued in 1909, but with only eighteen participants. The Mirror-Recorder again carried descriptions of the entries and participants, along with the text of Dr. Churchill’s remarks on the day, spread out over two issues, September 1 and September 8. Descriptions from the paper identify a few pictures within the Stamford Library collection. “Mrs. J. E. Safford drove a very pretty white horse, the decorations being pink and white and carried out in the minutest detail. The harness and wagon, including the top, were entirely covered with pink cloth and crepe paper, and pink paper roses and chrysanthemums. In the wagon were five small children dressed in pink, while Mrs. Safford was dressed in pink and white.”

On September 8, the paper also carried a letter from a visitor, signed E. L. S., who was critical of the parade. One criticism leveled was that “in the usual flower parade, no gentleman is admitted without a hat and gloves, that is unless he enters among the fantastic exhibits. A good many of us were not only astonished that this entry should have received a prize but that it was allowed to parade.” The category of “fantastic” or “grotesque” was for amusing, over-the top entries like the purple and orange, joke emblazoned float powered by two bicycles from the 1908 parade or the 1909 float made to look like a touring car that was “propelled by a mule hitched to the rear of the contraption.”

Reference to what is usual in this type of parade makes it clear that parades of this nature were not limited to Stamford, but were a popular entertainment of the time. The paper’s listing of entries notes that “There was only one entry in the class of gentleman drivers, that being Charles A. MacKillip … The prize for this class was of course awarded to Mr. MacKillip.” Other issues E. L. S. referred to as “minor” included uneven spacing between floats and the throwing of confetti.

But the biggest complaint was the low number of entries. Of course if E. L. S. had had his way, there would have been one fewer because Charles MacKillip would not have been allowed to participate without his hat and gloves. The letter writer felt that more locals and all the hotels should have joined in the effort to entertain the guests, who spent thousands of dollars every summer in Stamford. His sentiments of what was lacking in the parade were in sharp contrast to Dr. Churchill’s remarks, which included a lengthy list of what had been provided over the course of the season: “We have most faithfully tried to give you a pleasant and healthful summer home … pure water, parks to roam through, a fine opera house with ample entertainments, golfing, bowling, rowing, fine carriage rides in all directions, music, dancing, comedy and drama and base ball galore.” He then went on to encourage them not to leave, to stay through September and October, to “drink in the ozone of our delightful autumn. I urge you to remain to view the change of foliage.”

Apparently, the complaints of the letter-writing tourist were heeded. The 1910 Coaching Parade had 33 entries, led by the Stamford Board of Trade Band. The August 31, 1910 Mirror-Recorder reported “Greater interest was taken in the parade this year than at any previous time, as the entries and street and private decorations bore evidence.”

Parades of various sizes commemorating all sorts of occasions still happen everywhere in the little towns of the Catskills. Some are solemn; virtually every town has a Memorial Day Parade.

Some might be considered the descendants of the Coaching Parades, like Stamford’s Flag Day Parade, an hour-long event of marching bands, home-made floats, classic cars, fire engines and thrown candy. Just don’t try to cross through the village on Route 23 between 6 and 7 pm on June 14—you’ll wait on the edges and be part of what is called locally the “after parade.”

Car owned and driven by D.C. Hoagland; entirely white and yellow, first prize in the automobile category. All photos courtesy of Stamford Library.