Title: Poland Spring : a tale of the Gilded Age, 1860-1900 /
Authors: Richards, David, 1962-
Publisher: University of New Hampshire Press ; Published by University Press of New England,
Year: 2005
Subjects: Ricker family.; Hiram Ricker & Sons.; Springs Maine Poland Spring History.; Resorts Maine Poland Spring History.; Businessmen Maine Poland Spring Biography.; Poland Spring (Me.) History.; Poland Spring (Me.) Social life and customs.; Poland Spring (Me.) Economic conditions.; Poland Spring (Me.) Biography.
Abstract: "Between 1860 and 1900 the Ricker family's rustic frontier farm became the world-renowned summer community of Poland Spring, Maine, a "middle landscape" where upper-middle-class patrons and their urban values of status, leisure, and consumption confronted, flirted with, embraced and ultimately subsumed traditional, rural New England. First and foremost a cultural study, Poland Spring chronicles the rise of a nineteenth-century tourist mecca.
Contents: From country farm to summer city -- 1: The people of progress -- The proprietors -- The patrons -- 2: The masquerade of antimodernity -- The Mansion House: "a noble inheritance" -- The Poland Spring House: "Mecca of the fashion, the wealth and culture of the country" -- The Spring House: "the ministry of pure water" -- 3: The search for a middle landscape: "a city of vivid contrasts" -- The farm: "lovely pastoral country" -- The grounds: "out of a country farm an Eden" -- The playing fields: a picturesque recreational landscape -- The Maine state building: toward an urban vision -- Poland spring in 1900.