Chautauqua Pavilion (Texas Country Reporter)

Dallas Heritage Village formerly known as Old City Park added a Chautauqua Pavilion in 1996. Chautauqua was a popular entertainment and education circuit.
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TCRbob

Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park
1515 S. Harwood, Dallas, Texas 75215-1273
Phone: (214) 421-5141
Ticket Office/Museum Store: (214) 413-3679

Video Script:: [Music] there was the time long before the glass and steel skyscrapers when Native Americans camped on the banks of router's Springs back in the early days of John Neely Brian's village on the Trinity this was a gathering place where families spent lazy summer afternoons in the city's first public park but as they say that was then and this is now today old city park is moving forward to its past [Music] we have a Main Street area with stores kind of a neighborhood with Victorian homes we have a church in a school so in some ways it is a replica of a small town in the late 19th early 20th century Michael hazel knows a lot about Old City Park he knows what it was and what it will be again the land where we are today at Old City Park was donated to the city in 1876 more than a hundred years ago for public park it was called city park it was a very popular gathering place around the turn of the century back in the late 19th century before the days of internet and cable TV for some isolation was just a way of life a trip to your nearest neighbor could be an all-day affair and news from other areas of the country was sometimes years incoming then a new trend swept across the nation's plains and changed all that performers and lecturers came to town and a new world arrived with them it was called the Chautauqua Movement all of the other structures in old city park are historic structures which have been moved here and restored but the only remaining permits Chautauqua building in Texas is in Waxahachie and they're not about to give it up so if we were going to have us to talk with a billion we had to recreate one Theodore Roosevelt called Chautauqua the most American thing in America it was essentially an adult education there was a great thirst for learning in the late nineteenth century and most people had not had opportunities for higher education they would have music of all sorts they would even have entertainment jugglers and yodelers and alai Chautauqua was a hit thousands of permanent pavilions sprang up around the country including sites in the Dallas area today the Loxahatchee Chautauqua is the only one left in the state 92 year old Loreen Lynch remembers it like it was yesterday I think I was about 13 years old and we went to the programs every day twice a day one time in the morning and one time in the afternoon well it was a big thing it was a big thing to get to come out here and camp and see all the shows we had it had a wonderful time you have to remember that in the 1920s radio was first becoming popular automobiles were proliferating and life was changing for a great many people and so by the early 1930s of the Chautauqua Movement just folded very quickly most of the old Chautauqua pavilions are gone now the new structure at old city park is the first to be built in almost a century but it's not just a building they're constructing here it's a way of life they're hoping to revive back to a day when families spent time together to a time when you could talk and laugh and listen to music and be carefree back to a place called Chautauqua [Applause] [Music] we hope that it will become a gathering place again where families church groups can come for reunions I think that the new pavilion will likewise be a center for Old City Park and gathering place [Music] you