The Victorians who walked our steamy streets in the summers had the same ideas most of us have, regarding summer in the city. The best way to get through it was to leave it. Those with means, like today, had summer homes outside of the city limits. Ironically, some of those Victorian homes, in the farthest reaches of the boroughs, are now inside of the city limits. The truly rich got way out of town: the many vacation towns of Long Island, the Hudson Valley, Adirondacks and Catskills, Vermont, and the ultimate summer paradise: Newport, Rhode Island. But for the poor, there was no escape from the city heat. Already crowded into airless tenements, they took to the streets for some relief. But the streets were filthy, dangerous, and busy, and were no place for a child to play. In 1877, a minister in the small town of Sherman, PA joined with New York City churches, and started the Fresh Air Fund, a program to get city kids to the country.

But the story begins before the first child spent a summer in Pennsylvania. By the end of the Civil War, New York and Brooklyn saw their populations rising at a tremendous rate, mostly due to immigration from Ireland, Italy, Germany, and other European countries. Most of these people were poor, and crowded into the growing slums of the Lower East Side, as well as Williamsburg, and other parts of Brooklyn, joining the poor already there. The tenements of the mid-19th century made later tenements, as horrible as they were, look like palaces in comparison. There was no legal mandate for air shafts and windows in the center of buildings, and in many cases, one building would have another built right up on it in the back of the lot. They had no running water and inadequate privies in the back. They were overcrowded, filthy, rickety buildings, with dark and dank halls and rooms, and they were home for thousands of people.

Much of the charity that took place at this time was through the churches, and it was to the churches that the idea of “fresh air” first took hold. In Brooklyn, an appeal for raising funds for “fresh air” trips for entire impoverished families, already under the care of charities, was proposed in the beginning of the summer of 1868, at Brooklyn Height’s Grace Church. Realizing that the poor never got the chance to get out of town, or even take day trips to Brooklyn’s own shoreline, it was suggested in a flyer distributed one Sunday at Grace, that funds be raised to do that, give the gift of “fresh air” to a deserving poor family.

Grace Episcopal has long been one of Brooklyn’s wealthier churches, and the idea resonated with many of the parishioners, but certainly not all. Perhaps to avoid appearing un-Christian at church, several took the issue to the Brooklyn Eagle’s letters to the editor. It was mentioned that many of these poor folk were already the recipients of weekly stipends administered all winter. Why, they asked, should they pay to send these unproductive and often criminally minded people on fun trips in the summer? Other people wrote in, talking about the horrible conditions of the slums, and the joy on the faces of those who were allowed to go to the shore, or even on a picnic away from the city streets. What was wrong, they said, with paying a small sum to allow a husband to take his wife and kids on a picnic in the park, or have an opportunity to have a walk along the beach somewhere?

“The poor don’t go out of town. Sick or well, their health must strive without the change of air and scene that we demand as our own. Doomed to alternate between the dingy pent- up room or the foul street, the open face of God’s creation seldom gladdens their eye.” This was part of the flyer distributed at Grace, echoed by an Eagle reader, who was in favor of donating trips, or sponsoring excursions. Apparently, there were enough charitable people at Grace and other churches, and the first family fresh air excursions were embarked upon. Beginning at Grace Church, the official Fresh Air Fund was started.

The call for adult participation in the Fresh Air Fund was tempered by the Eagle and other organizations calling for something even more important for poor people – a Fresh Water Fund. Explaining that many poor people were not able to bathe, some not for months on end, they advocated for fresh water baths to be made available in the city. They postulated that the poor did not want to be filthy, but they had no choice, as they had no running water, and certainly no bath facilities. Public baths are a topic for a different time, but remain interesting in our tale, as reformers and others begin to notice that the poor weren’t just without money, they were without so much more, simple things that the wealthier took for granted. This would lead to the great reform movement that was still thirty years away.

By 1872, the focus of the Fresh Air Fund was arranging outings to families, mothers and their children, and to the “feeble minded”, living in institutions. Throughout these years, New York experienced many of its tuberculosis epidemics, which killed thousands, especially among the poor, and most especially the young. For more and more public health advocates and charities alike, it was seen as extremely beneficial to give young people access to fresh air, in the belief that the miasma of poverty was as dangerous as any other contact to the disease.

The first excursion for the poor children of Brooklyn took place on August 2, 1872. 500 children gathered downtown, and were taken by horse trolley to East New York, where they transferred to a train to Canarsie. For most of the children, it was their first ride on either form of transportation. In Canarsie, they went to a picnic ground near the train station and the beach. They were fed; they played games, and splashed around in the ocean. They were then treated to a steamboat ride by a generous donor, they got to see the beach at Far Rockaway, and came back to the picnic grounds, where they went swimming again before being given cake and ice cream, and then bundled off back to their homes. The trip was a great success, there was no trouble of any kind, and all concerned, from the organizers, to the chaperones, to the railroad men and the police, were touched by the experience. Enough so that it was repeated, with another group of children, the next day.

By 1877, the Fresh Air Fund had been helping the poor for over ten years, and was one of the better funded private charities in Brooklyn. It had been embraced by the public transportation owners, who offered free rides on trolleys and trains for those going on trips sponsored by the charity. Many of Brooklyn’s society ladies and gentlemen acted as chaperones at children’s events, and those who had businesses that could donate services or products did so. Newspapers endorsed the efforts, and donated as well. The charity’s staff took care of the rest. Churches in other parts of Brooklyn, as well as in Manhattan began their own similar programs. It was time for the minister in rural Pennsylvania to find the people in New York, and offer the summer hosting program we know so well today.

Reverend Parson’s parishioners in Pennsylvania began to host children for several weeks, almost an entire summer, allowing a child to get out of the city, learn about nature, farming and the rural experience. In only five years, the program grew to be so popular that Reverend Parsons went to the New York Herald Tribune for support. The Fresh Air Fund would be incorporated as The Tribune Fresh Air Fund Aid Society. Today they are sponsored by the New York Times.

The Brooklyn Fresh Air Fund, and its counterpart in Manhattan, still ran day programs, as not every child could or would be sent to the country each summer. The organizations were joined in programs that sent kids to Brooklyn’s beaches, as well as to day camps on Long Island and upstate. The Fund expanded their summer stay program well beyond Reverend Parson’s Pennsylvania parish, with host families upstate and on Long Island. The Brooklyn Eagle chronicled event after event that the Fund hosted, up until the end of 1902, when the digital record ends. The stories told then, continue until this day.

Today, the Fresh Air Fund still has its famous summer program, with host families all over the country and in Canada taking in inner-city kids for the summer. They also run day camps, week-long camps and other programs from their five camps, upstate in the Fishkill area. The camps cater to groups of boys or girls, offering them a chance to learn to swim, boat, and hike. They can also learn computer skills, have educational opportunities and enjoy physical fitness activities. Both Mariah Carey and Tommy Hilfiger have generously donated to this organization which has been a staple of Brooklyn’s charitable life since at least 1868.

Photo: Brooklyn Public Library Collections


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