Author: Stuart M. Blumin

Publisher:

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13:

If travelers along Route 20 in east-central New York notice the village of Sharon Springs at all, it is only when they are caught in the speed trap located halfway down the hill leading to the town's single traffic light. But if one turns north at the light and drives into the heart of town, one is met with sights more interesting than might have been anticipated. During winter, the village resembles a sleeping relic of nineteenth-century America. In the summer, the streets are alive with people, many wearing the black coats and earlocks that are the marks of the Hasidic Jew-the flavor is not that or rural America, but a prewar Hungary or Romania.The Short Season of Sharon Springsis a portrait in photographs and words of the rise, decline, and survival of this strange little village and health spa in rural New York. Stuart M. Blumin has written a history of Sharon Springs that begins with the founding of the spa in 1825, describes the golden age of upper-class resort life in the nineteenth century, analyzes the passing of that age and the emergence of a new era of local contraction and decay, and chronicles the curious manner in which the spa has managed to survive into our own day. He tells, also, the parallel story of the rural village that grew up around the hotels and baths, and that waxed and waned with the spa, even though it drew most of its sustenance not from tourism but from agriculture. Hansi Durlach has photographed the village, the villagers, and the summer visitors in ways that convey her own vision of contemporary Sharon Springs, and to her striking images are added a number of photographs that depict Sharon Springs in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The text and photographs together tell the singular tale of a little community that is at once a part of and apart from rural America. Hansi Durlach is a professional photographer. Stuart M. Blumin is Associate Professor of History at Cornell University. Deborah Adelman Blumin is a sociologist who has worked for the State of New York.