OF OLD NEW YORK

Skating in Old New York

By Irving Brokaw

Winner, American Figure Skating Championship, 1906—Author,
The Art of Skating, Arden Press, London, 1909

Illustrations from the Author's Collection of Rare Prints of
Old New York

When I read of the winter sports the inhabitants of
New York enjoyed fifty or sixty years ago, I sometimes
wish I had been of the forrner generation. The idea of
a skating club privileged to have a hundred days of out¬
door skating in one season, and that on ponds located in
the heart of the city, makes our skaters of to-day envious
indeed. When one speaks to a skating club of to-day of
such an officer as a meteorologist, charged with the duty
of forecasting the weather and notifying the members
when they might expect skating, he meets with good-
natured banter. Yet this office was filled by one of the
most distinguished citizens of our city fifty years ago
and for a club whose rendezvous was the vicinity of
Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street!

It is not too much to say that the American skaters of
fifty to sixty years ago, many of whom either learned or
developed their art in New York, really taught the world
to skate; their skill was the wonder of their day in every
Occidental country where ice forms; the figures which
they originated or developed are standard movements in
the skating programs of the world. Their athletic prow¬
ess is one of the cherished chapters in the history of clean,
wholesome American sport. With regret we have to ad¬
mit that our skaters of to-day do not rank with the skaters
of other countries as the skaters of Old New York ranked
with the best foreign skaters of their day. And the only
consolation is that it was the Americans who taught the

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