History
It was founded in 1874 by inventor Lewis Miller and Methodist Bishop John Heyl Vincent as a teaching camp for Sunday school teachers. The teachers would disembark at Palestine Park, and begin a course of Bible study that used the Park to teach of the geography of the Holy Land.
The Institution has operated each summer since then, gradually expanding its season length and program offerings organized around the four pillars: arts, education, religion and recreation. It offers a wide range of educational activities to an average of 75,000 people, in residence on any particular day during the season, and another 145,000 during the season attend public events, including popular entertainment, theater, symphony, ballet, opera and visual arts exhibitions.
The Institution also includes school of Special Studies, and a residential music program of intensive study is offered to students on the verge of professional careers who audition for admittance into Chautauqua's schools of fine and performing arts.
The physical setting of the Institution defined its development as an assembly. The grounds are situated on the west shoreline of upper Chautauqua Lake. The early tent camp assembly gave way to cottages and rooming houses, and then hotels and eventually condominiums. But much of the pastoral summer retreat on the lake survives.
In 1973 the National Park Service recognized the institution's historic importance by adding it to the National Register of Historic Places. In 1989, the Department of the Interior designated it a National Historic Landmark District, consisting of most of the Institution property between NY 394, formerly NY 17J, the lake and (roughly) Lowell and North avenues.
Read more about this topic: Chautauqua Institution
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)