This is Mrs. Vanderveer's Bathing Pavilion at West Brighton Beach, Coney Island. Her husband, William Vanderveer, ran the Concourse Hotel. Lucy (Devlin) Vanderveer (born in Ireland about 1835) was in charge of this enormous Bathing Pavilion.The bathing pavilion was associated with the hotel run by William Vanderveer (also known as Vanderveer's Hotel). According to the above ad from 1881, featured 400 bathing rooms. These rooms were sheltered cubicles in which ladies (and gentlemen) could enjoy bathing in the sea without having to reveal themselves in bathing costumes (which were available for rent as well). It sounds as if there were taps for hot/cold and salt/fresh water, too.
Mrs. Vanderveer was sued for $5000 by the widow of William Nugent, who had drowned in August 1884 in front of the Pavilion, after renting a room and bathing suit there. The lack of life boats at the pavilion was cited as negligence and the widow was awarded the money in 1885.After Mrs. Vanderveer's death in the mid-1880s, her will was challenged and fought over by her children for years. Her husband survived her, so she must have been wealthy in her own right. It is a very sad story, best told perhaps in a future post.
SOURCES
"A Bathing Accident at Coney Island," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 13, 1884, p. 4.
"The Law Guarding Bathers," New York Times, Feb. 28, 1885, p. 3.
Picture from the Brooklyn Public Library.
August 17, 1881 advertisement of the Vanderveer Pavilion from Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
William and Lucy Vanderveer on the 1880 census, link here at FamilySearch.org.
4 comments:
And, in that day and age, $5000 was probably a lot of money, even if she did have money in her own right. It always interests me to see how litigious people were even in "the olden days". :)
I had never heard of bathing pavilions before. Thanks for the very interesting post! www.satisfiedsole.com
Maybe I'm being stupid, but how could people in a cubicle bathe in the sea? Did they just stand there and wait for the tide to come in?!
(Or were the cubicles on wheels like some I've seen, to be pushed into the water?)
Carol - Yes, you're right - it was a huge amount of money.
Pam - I was so intrigued by the picture that I had to try and find out about her.
Catherine - I wondered that too. I know that they used to have individual bathing rooms that were built a bit of the way out into the sea (in the 20s I think)...I tried to find out what the set-up was in the pavilions but the old papers all assumed that we knew! I reckon it was a sort of open structure with cubicles built right over the shoreline...or possibly in this case it would be a place where you could bathe in sea water that was pumped in via taps.
I really do need to look out for this info. I have a book on Coney Island but it wasn't any more helpful than the newspapers.
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