USA > Rhode Island > The "Old Stone Bank" history of Rhode Island, Vol. IV > Part 30
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And now how great the change! Unag- gressive, but quietly persistent, the Pem- brokers have slowly worn down the taboos. Today they walk unchallenged! More, they are often accompanied on the Brown campus by Brown men who find no need for apology. And Brown men no longer deem Pembroke beyond the pale of legiti- mate places to procure a partner for an evening's entertainment. Either these new generations have acquired a new tol- erance or they have suddenly discovered the great opportunities their fathers wil- fully overlooked. But this is regarding Pembroke only from the point of social standing on the hill. It might be interest- ing to look back to the origin of the college and see what heavy opposition the women have encountered even in their honest desire for higher education.
The first notion (as far as Rhode Island was concerned) that women might have a college education was launched after Pres- ident 'Maxcy of Brown University had married one of Ezek Hopkins' daughters. With the advantage of having such a learned man in the family, the other daughter, Heart Hopkins, was able to gratify her ambition and took a full col- legiate course under her brother-in-law. This was in 1792, and Miss Hopkins thus became the first Rhode Island woman to receive a full college education.
Although this undoubtedly instilled the idea in the minds of other Rhode Island women of equal ambition, it was a long time before they were able to achieve a similar opportunity. Previously, and in fact up to the year 1828, the average woman in Rhode Island was granted no more than a simple high school education.
If she chose to study further, it was wholly upon her own initiative. In 1828, John Kingsley, a Trustee and Fellow of Brown University, founded a school of higher education which he called the Young Ladies' High School. It was not a high school as the term is recognized today but more of a finishing school. Little enough was offered in the way of subjects; the ordinary fundamentals, a little history, a bit of French, and some painting and em- broidery were considered sufficient. As a matter of fact, a full classical education was not open to girls who attended public schools in Rhode Island until 1872. But . Professor Kingsley's institution was a laudable step in the right direction; and by the time he retired and the name was changed to Lincoln School, some of his ideas were getting a hold on the public mind. Liberal-minded men helped the cause, and gradually aided in breaking down the long-established theory that a knowledge of household management was enough for a woman.
Then, in 1874, came a bombshell. A young woman made a very urgent applica- tion for admission to Brown University. Her case was not to be thrust aside lightly; and the matter came up for discussion before the advisory and executive com- mittees. But, unfortunately, this woman had no abetting influence in the form of a president to help her attain her ambition, and her application was turned down. Yet her failure was not wholly without result for it only stimulated fresh senti- ment in favor of higher education for all women.
In 1881, John Greenleaf Whittier, a member of the Board of Trustees at Brown since 1869, wrote to a Miss Katherine H. Austin of this city: "I shall do all in my power to open the doors of Brown Univer- sity to women. I enclose a note to Richard Atwater which I will thank thee to for- ward to him. Of course the world is grow- ing better; the Lord reigns; our old planet is wheeling slowly into fuller light. I despair of nothing good. All will come in due time that is really needed. All we have to do is to work and wait."
To Richard Atwater he wrote: "I hope the time is not far distant when Brown University will be open to women. The
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traditions of the noble old institution are all in favor of broad liberality and equality of rights and privileges. The state of my health and the increasing weight of years may prevent me from taking an active part in the matter, but it would be a great satisfaction to give my voice in behalf of a measure which I feel certain would redound to the honor and materi- ally promote the prosperity of the college. Brown University cannot afford to hesi- tate much longer in a matter like this, of simple justice. No one who has felt the pulse of public opinion can doubt that the time has come when a liberal, educational policy, irrespective of sex, is not only a. duty but a necessity.
The other four Quakers on the Board of Trustees joined heartily in Whittier's sentiments, they being the first to do so. President Robinson did not favor the idea at once; but after he had visited Cornell and had been entertained in the women's dormitory there, his attitude was reversed.
At about this period, Miss Helen Mac- Gill, a graduate of Cambridge University, England, arrived in Providence and ad- dressed the Rhode Island Women's Suf- frage Association on the subject of college education for women. She fired her listen- ers with new hope, and they set earnestly to plan ways and means of bringing such a thing about in this state. They talked with professors on the Brown faculty and other men about town, but although the matter came up before the corporation of the college in 1885-6-7-8, it was still turned down. In 1888, the Providence Journal took up cudgels for the women with an article to the effect that all Rhode Island women seeking a college education had to become exiles from their own state. Perhaps it was this that stimulated the corporation to allow women to take exam- inations at Brown and receive certificates of proficiency.
However, with the coming of Elisha Benjamin Andrews into the presidency, the women secured a strong supporter. Under his administration women were admitted to classes at last. Later, he definitely asked for half a million dollars for a women's college.
The first building secured for the new
college was at 235 Benefit Street, being the one formerly used by Professor Kings- ley. A great sign hung over the door read- ing, "Women's College in Brown Uni- versity " but it was later amended to read "in Connection with Brown University." This building was soon overcrowded. From four students the first year, the number grew to 100 students the fourth year, a good proportion of these being from out of town. At last President Andrews, with the capable aid of Miss Sarah E. Doyle, got a group of interested women together and formulated definite plans for a new women's college. In six months $17,500 was raised and a recita- tion hall was begun on land between Cushing and Meeting Streets. It was dedi- cated in 1896 as Pembroke Hall, in mem- ory of Pembroke College, Cambridge University, England, and that year's grad- uating class made use of it.
From then on the path was easier. The new Women's College was made a definite part of Brown University. Money in gifts and endowments was steadily forthcom- ing, as well as more land in the Cushing and Meeting Streets area. President Andrews resigned in 1899, but the new president, William Howard Perry Faunce, was equally devoted to progress of the new college. Within the next decade the college grew to have its own executive committee and faculty. A first dormitory, an old family mansion at 66 Benefit Street, was given to the college. In 1907, Frank A. Sayles donated $50,000 for a gym- nasium; and then, after some lots of land on Cushing Street had been given to the college in 1909, Miller Hall was erected. The development of the college since that time is well known. With Metcalf Hall, Sharpe and East Houses as additional dormitories and Alumnae Hall as a center for all sorts of activities, and the advan- tage of the full facilities of Brown Univer- sity as well, the college has grown to a size and distinction sufficient to draw students from all parts of the country. Recently, of course, it has been relieved of the ambiguity of its old name, "Wom- en's College in Brown University," by taking the name which Brown men had always called it - "Pembroke College."
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THE FIRST MOVIE
TE THINK back! What was the very first moving picture you remember seeing, and seeing is the correct term because the first pictures to move on a screen were silent except for the clickety-click of gears and sprockets as the operator with steady hand ground away with a crank inside a hastily thrown together construc- tion of discarded scenery, set up far back in the orchestra or down front in the gallery. Naturally the answer to that question will cover a wide range from "Fireman, Fireman, Save My Child" to "The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Prize Fight," "The Great Train Robbery," etc. to Al Jolson's historic "The Jazz Singer," the first of the talkies, and will include such memorable silent movie milestones, as "The Fifty Foot Kiss," "Quo Vadis," "The Four Horsemen," "The Birth of a Nation," "The Covered Wagon," and many other all-time favorites.
Number one in the memory of the author was the first of the narrative or sequence productions, the grandparent of the shooting, fighting, leaping, chasing and hardriding and killing thrillers, "The Great Train Robbery," and this classic was beheld for six nights in succession when the Kickapoo Indians came to town with their tent-show, featuring a few minutes of native dancing, rope-spinning, knife-throwing and such spectacles, fol- lowed by an hour or two of high-pressure selling of World-Renowned Sagwa recom- mended for snake-bite and mighty palat- able when there were no snakes around. The showing of the Train Robbery feature was held back until the very last dollar was squeezed from the nodding, restless, mosquito-bitten crowd, and then, at last, for a few minutes, perhaps ten or twelve, on a billowing five-by-three sheet, the magic of flickering, jiggling, in and out of focus moving pictures was exhibited. Few of the spell-bound audience, espe- cially the young ones who had no interest in Sagwa or in the pickled tape-worms displayed on the stage, could hardly wait for another night to roll around, for the next grand finale of the Kickapoo Indians'
mammoth, stupendous open-air perform- ance, "the movin' pitchur" "The Great Train Robbery." For the Rhode Island Historian, that was a long time ago, but, in the light of American history, the "Great Train Robbery" period, or the very birth of the motion picture industry in America, was not so long ago.
Edward Muybridge, an Englishman, but living in the United States at the time of his discovery, or, more properly his idea, may be given the title of "Father of Motion Pictures," J. Marey, of France, may be called the "elder brother," and Thomas A. Edison, the "junior brother." Others may be convinced that Edison should take all honors for the invention, but here is how it all began.
In 1871, Muybridge was attached to a state survey corps in California as an official photographer. Governor Leland Stanford was a great lover of horses and maintained one of the largest stud and stock farms in the country. He had made a wager with a friend that a running horse at no time had all four feet off the ground, and the parties to this wager realizing that the camera was quicker than the eye, determined to bring in a photographer to settle the bet. Muybridge was well known to Mr: Stanford as a painstaking and enthusiastic artist and so was called in. A deal was made guaranteeing the photographer all his expenses, and soon began a series of costly experiments which were actually begun in Sacramento during the year 1872. The photographer em- ployed from twelve to twenty-four cam- eras stationed at regular distances around the track. He also devised a system with strings attached to the camera shutters, whereby the running beast would photo- graph itself when it broke the string. Electrical devices were also invented by Muybridge for closing the shutters. Be- fore the experiments were completed, more than 500,000 wet glass plates were used, but it was concluded at the time that the horse, when running, always had at least one foot on the ground.
During these unique tests, the idea of
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MAIN BANKING ROOMS OF THE OLNEYVILLE BRANCH OF THE PROVIDENCE INSTITUTION FOR SAVINGS.
placing together a number of the instan- taneous pictures and projecting them upon a wall while under motion had grown on Muybridge, and he returned to San Francisco to work out the problem. He made a number of glass positives and fastened them to a wheel about thirteen feet in diameter. By using a strong arti- ficial light, he projected the pictures and the constantly changing postures, when rapidly turned before the light, gave the illusion of animation. He tinkered with this crude machine for nearly eight years, finally giving it a name, and quite a name it was, "The Zoopraxiscope" liberally interpreted as "a series of animal pic- tures." The "Zoopraxiscope" was given its initial public exhibition in San Fran- cisco in 1880, and later displayed in London, Paris, New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
Before going abroad, Muybridge con- ferred with Mr. Edison suggesting the combination of his machine with the phonograph, then in its swaddling clothes.
In Paris, Muybridge talked frequently with Monsieur Marey of the Institute of France. Later, these two experimenters were destined to hit upon the basic com- bination essential to the early success of the idea. The Frenchman invented, or first utilized, a continuous film. Edison went Marey one better by perforating the film strip with uniform holes, and gearing the ribbon to a pin sprocket wheel and thereby settled the question of register.
Down to 1895, the minds of all the ex- perimenters were bent on taking rather than on the exhibiting of moving pictures. Mr. Edison broke away with a peep show idea, and, in 1893 the first of these shows was conducted in the former famous gambling house of George Hankins in Chicago. This form of exhibition aroused but little interest, and during the World's Fair of that year animated photography had little vogue. On April 14, 1894, the first showing of Edison's Kinetoscopes took place at 1155 Broadway near 27th Street. The fiftieth anniversary of this event was
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observed and properly noted, although many still contend that the actual first showing of film was on April 23, 1896. This was at Koster and Bial's Music Hall on 34th Street, now the rear end of Macy's Store. The machine was the Vitascope, the invention of Thomas Armat, but probably improved by Edison, since the Vitascope was constructed by Edison at his West Orange, New Jersey labora- tories.
So much for the general history; now when did the movies come to Rhode Island for the first time? Rarely, do we have the privilege of meeting history- makers in the flesh, but, in searching for the first of the motion pictures ever ex- hibited in the state we came upon the man himself, one of the first to see great possibilities in the "flickers," who laid the foundation stone of motion picture entertainment in Rhode Island and who, at this writing, is still in the business, reaping richly the rewards of his early good judgment in giving the people what they want.
Lothrop's in Providence occupied the site of the entrance to the present RKO Albee Theatre adjacent to Grace Church. In partnership with another, Spitz agreed to the proposition, changed the name of the theatre to the Olympic and most successfully began to play big time vaude- ville with such headliners as Lillian Russell, Little Egypt, the Four Cohans, Weber & Fields, etc. The Olympic later became the Park, and in its last days, just before it was torn down to make way for the RKO Albee, it was a movie house called the Nickel.
If Mr. Spitz's memory serves him right, and according to the recollections of Mr. Frank Page, life-long associate of Spitz, the first motion picture seen in Rhode Island was exhibited in his Olympic Theatre on Westminster Street, probably during the year 1896.
The title of this first picture was "Fire- man, Fireman, Save My Child," and both the projection machine and the film were procured from Lubin of Philadelphia, a pioneer in the industry. The machine was Some day shall be related the complete and amazing life story of the man who began it all in Rhode Island, but in this account reference to the dean of local showmen, Mr. Abe Spitz, will be limited to his historic part in bringing the very first motion picture to Providence. It's a long and spectacular narrative when one tells the life story of Abe Spitz from the time he went on tour with his cousin, the master showman, Mike Leavitt, acting as nurse-maid for a set of cockatoos featured in a flashy vaudeville act, up to the time when he decided to stay put in Rhode Island as a theatre builder and manager. For local movie history we must pick up the biography of Rhode Island's one- time trouper, programmer, advance agent, manager, producer, theatre builder, op- erator, playwright and actor and now owner and operator of numerous Rhode Island theatres, at the point when late in the nineties he was operating the Paw- tucket Opera House for Doc Lothrop of nearly nine feet long, and with consider- able difficulty was placed in the balcony on a series of jacks. A generator was set up on the stage and connected by cable to the projector in the balcony and a small screen was erected on the stage. Strange as it may seem, our first local movie was a sound picture, in a sense, for as the sequence flickered away, from the peaceful family scene around the fireside to the sudden burst of flames, and from then to the fire-house and the wild scram- ble of hoses and ladders and finally to the daring rescue, none other than the famed song writer, Joe Howard, who with his partner wife, then billed under the name of Emerson, stood in the darkened wings and sang an appropriate ballad. What they sang is not known, except that, for certain, it was not Joe Howard's immortal "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now," for at that time Joe had no good reason to say it in song as he did later, "Good Bye, My Lady Love." Emerson was still in Boston. Spitz was so successful with the . the act, and still Mrs. Howard, when the Pawtucket House that Lothrop suggested that the energetic young manager also take over Lothrop's Opera House in Provi- dence, at the time a losing venture.
two accompanied with song "Fireman, Fireman, Save My Child," Rhode Island's first movie in the now long-forgotten Olympic in Providence.
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For many years thereafter, a motion picture remained on the bill of local thea- tres as a novelty, a chaser, or trailer, and Edward M. Fay, leading showman in these parts, remembers well how the cus- tomers at the old Keith Theatre started
putting on their coats when the variety program rang down the final curtain on the acrobats or the trained bears, and the house was darkened for one reel of "Old Madrid," "Plantation Capers " or "How Susie Captured the Burglar."
THE FIRST TO FLY
F RIDAY, December 17, 1943, marked the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of a new era in the history of mankind. For, on that date in the year 1903, two Americans, Wilbur and Orville Wright, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, succeeded in leaving the earth in a power-driven fly- ing machine to travel unsupported in mid- air for a distance of 852 feet in 59 seconds, and return to the earth, unharmed. In the light of what the world has come to know of traveling in the air during the past two score years, and in the light of the part that man's mastery of the air is playing in his destiny, there is little need for words now to comprehend the signif- icance of the little-noticed and generally scorned experiment successfully completed on the wind-swept sand stretch between Albemarle Sound and the open Atlantic.
Just at the moment this very sentence was about to be written, a great plane roared overhead in the night, on schedule to the moment, carrying passengers, baggage, and possibly the mail, for some nearby or faraway destination. But forty years, scarcely more than a generation, from busy day and night traffic in the skies back to an oversized box kite, a sagging, fragile contraption of light wood, cloth, glue and wires, propelled by a coughing, faltering, smoking gasoline motor, carried a human being into the air, and under control, for the first time in the history of the world. The Wright brothers were the first to fly, but they were not the first who dared to leave the earth, for the balloon, long before, had given courageous humans bird's-eye views of the earth and its people. It may be interesting to know that Rhode Islanders were quick to be air-minded, following each of the two great milestones in the evolution of aeronautics, the first
balloon ascension and the history-making flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk.
Discovered by Jacques and Joseph Montgolfier, the world's first balloon ascended on June 5, 1783, at Annonay, about 40 miles from Lyons, France, and the first human being to ascend in a bal- loon was Monsieur Jean François Pilâtre de Rozier, who went aloft in a captive bal- loon on October 15, 1783, and one month later trusted himself to a free fire balloon, rising to a height of 500 feet and traveling approximately 9,000 yards in about twenty-five minutes. For one hundred and twenty years after that eventful moment in Paris when Monsieur de Rozier went up into the air from the Bois de Boulogne, sailed over the roof tops of the Military Academy and came down somewhere beyond the Boulevards with- out breaking his neck, ballooning was man's only means of leaving the earth, and returning, if he had good fortune.
Aerostation, that part of the science of aerial navigation that deals with lighter- than-air aircraft having no motive power, attracted the attention and interest of scientists and daredevils throughout the world, including America, and rapid strides were made in the construction of balloons and in their navigation. Not yet has it been possible to give the exact date of the first balloon ascension in Rhode Island, but about 1800, less than twenty years after the Montgolfier brothers sent their first inflated linen globe into the air, a free balloon, probably a small one, ascended above Providence carrying no human being, but a dog and a cat, who, so the record has it, "went up very ge- nially, without expressions of alarm." Be- fore cutting away the fastenings, the cords
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Courtesy, Pawtucket Times
JACK MCGEE ABOUT TO START A FLIGHT IN 1912 WITH MISS KATHERINE WHITTLESLEY OF WASHINGTON, D. C. JOSEPH E. BOYLE, MCGEE'S MANAGER, IS WISHING THE PASSENGER A "HAPPY LANDING."
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MON
ASCENSION OF "MONARCH OF THE E AIR" FROM PRESENT EXCHANGE PLACE ON JULY 7, 1877. FAMED RHODE ISLAND BALLOONIST, PROFESSOR JAMES K. ALLEN, ASCENDED WITH HIS SON AND DAUGHTER, EZRA AND LIZZIE, AND LOCAL NEWS REPORTERS, LANDING SAFELY AT KINGSTON.
attaching the parachute to the balloon were set on fire. After rising to a consider- able height, the cords were severed and the animal travelers descended. Quoting from the obscure reference recently dis- covered: "to the dog, it proved fatal, but the cat, blessed with eight extra lives, escaped." The meagre report of this inci- dent adds little to our knowledge of ear- liest local aerial history, although it does date the appearance here of a balloon and parachute only a few years following their discovery. But, during the first half of the nineteenth century, balloon ascensions became the thrill of thrills for Rhode Islanders, and, after the year 1856, when James Allen made his first ascent from a vacant lot on the site of the Providence
City Hall, Rhode Island soon became nationally famous for what went on high in the clouds above its roof tops and church steeples, especially on the 4th of July, for the Allens of Rhode Island have become immortals in the history of balloon- ing. When the Civil War began, James Allen and his son Ezra enlisted with the Federal Army as observers, and while en- gaged in their duties with a balloon de- tachment somewhere in Virginia, they met Count Zeppelin, then a member of the German Embassy at Washington. With the Allens of Providence, the famed in- ventor of the lighter-than-air dirigible had his first ride in an aircraft.
Take any 4th of July celebration in Providence during the past century -
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1857, for example. After the bell ringing, the Horribles parade, the marching of the Continentals, the speeches, the poems, and the open-house calls, the balloon ascension was, quoting from a news. re- port: "perfectly successful and witnessed by a great number of delighted spectators who crowded around the enclosed space on Exchange Place and filled house tops and windows in all directions. The bal- loons went up slowly and majestically - the larger one was under the direction of Mr. King of Philadelphia, who took up George Carr and Seth Simmons." "After hanging over the river," as the report reads, they floated down the Bay, and later passed in a northeasterly direction over the country, within hailing distance and speaking frequently to people over whose heads they were passing. The landing was safe and pleasant on the Rehoboth farm of Ira Perry. Mr. Allen went up alone in a 30 foot bag, holding 15,000 cubic feet of gas. The champion made Warren and finally turned up, or rather, came down, on Levi Horton's farm, also in Rehoboth. Nathan Wood of Swansea provided the horse and wagon to return Aeronaut Allen and his deflated balloon to town. It was a great day in Providence on the 4th of July in 1857, or in any year up until 1903 or so, and, Thomas Gorman, a full-grown Irish boy from Olneyville, never forgot the day in '57 when Mr. Allen's pride and joy went sailing into the air, and he went sailing into the crowd around the foot of an Exchange Place flag pole!
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