The Champagne Pavilion

from Popular Places of Resort Around N.Y. (1881)

This is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to visit in a time machine - the Champagne Pavilion at West Brighton Beach, Coney Island, in 1881. Ten cents for a glass or a "cocktail," which you could sip while you lounged in this elegant pavilion. They need more seating, but otherwise I like this very much.

The guidebook that features this ad says that other delights of West Brighton included fountains of "pure water," the Grand Plaza which was lit with electric light "of 25,000 candle power" in the evening, a Camera Obscura, restaurants and amusements of all kinds. I think I'll just sit in the pavilion quietly, though, sipping my cocktail, and watching everything. And since I always like to know these things, I found an 1889 recipe for champagne cocktails. This is from The Steward's Handbook and Guide to Party Catering by a man with two old Long Island names (which is why I chose his recipe), Jessup Whitehead*:

Champagne Cocktail - A large lemonade glass half filled with shaved ice, 2 drops each orange, lemon and gentian** essences; 1 tablespoon each orange-flower water and syrup; well shaken; 1 glass champagne added.

*Probably not a relation, though - I have a possible Whitehead ancestor, and at one time thought there were Jessups back in one of my ancestral lines, but have since learned otherwise. I do have a distant cousin called Whitehead Hicks, who was Mayor of New York from 1766 to 1776 -  so perhaps Jessup is a very, very distant cousin.

** Gentian is a flowering plant, whose roots are sometimes used in bitters. Apparently the old soft drink Moxie was flavored with gentian root bitters - it is still being sold in parts of the US (New England and Pennsylvania). I don't know if it still has gentian root bitters in it, though.