Recreation

Ski jump, Fiskartorpet, Sweden

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“Fiskartorpet”, skidbacke vid Stockholm
c. 1910

Fiskartorpet is a recreational area north of Stockholm, Sweden, in the Djurgården area. It features a small hotel, a conference center, and a number of restaurants. Sporting facilities include an ice hockey rink, a soccer field, and a K-47 ski jump. The owners advertise it as the “world’s smallest ski resort”.
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The first ski jump at the site was built in the 1890s.
Wikipedia

The first ski jumping hill at Fiskartorpet was built already in 1890, but the construction which still can be seen today has its origins in 1928. However, in 1982 the hill was closed down for jumping and despite no plans to tear down the extraordinary tower (it should be kept as an historical building), at least the inrun was slowly becoming a ruin. In 2005 Kristian Entin from ski club in Enskede decided to revive the hill and he managed to engage some other ski jumpers and ski friends for the idea. In fall 2005 both hills were repaired and in March 2006 the first competition after 23 years took place.
Ski Jumping Hill Archive

Street View

Ball game, Place Verte, Charleroi, Belgium

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Charleroi. Place du Sud. Le Jeu de Balle.
Publisher: Nels (Ernest Thill)

Street View (approximately)

History & Heritage of Charleroi: Place Verte (in French, translated)
Wikipedia: Balle pelote (in French, translated)

The Balle pelote is a team sport between two teams of five players on a called ground ballodrome. It is a game of gain-ground which takes place in the part West of Belgium, in the provinces of the Walloon Brabant, the Hainaut, Namur and in the western part of Flanders, but also in France, in valley of Sambre and the Inhabitant of Valenciennes.
Wikiversity

Casino de Monte Carlo, Monaco

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Monte-Carlo. — Le Casino. — LL.
Published: Levy & Sons, c.1910

Street View

The idea of opening a gambling casino in Monaco belongs to Princess Caroline, a shrewd, business-minded spouse of Prince Florestan I. Revenues from the proposed venture were supposed to save the House of Grimaldi from bankruptcy. The ruling family’s persistent financial problems became especially acute after the loss of tax revenue from two breakaway towns, Menton and Roquebrune, which declared independence from Monaco in 1848 and refused to pay taxes on olive oil and fruit imposed by the Grimaldis.

In 1854, Charles, Florestan’s son and future Prince of Monaco, recruited a team of Frenchmen—writer Albert Aubert and businessman Napoleon Langlois—to devise a development plan and write a prospectus to attract 4 million francs needed to build a spa for the treatment of various diseases, a gambling casino modeled from the Bad Homburg casino, and English-styled villas. Granted the concession of 30 years to operate a bathing establishment and gaming tables, Aubert and Langlois opened the first casino at 14 December 1856 in Villa Bellevu. Intended to be only a temporary location, the building was a modest mansion in La Condamine.

In the late 1850s, Monaco was an unlikely place for a resort to succeed. The lack of roads needed to connect Monaco to Nice and the rest of Europe, and the absence of comfortable accommodations for visitors, as well as the concessionaires’ failure to publicize the new resort, resulted in far fewer customers than was originally anticipated. Unable to raise the capital needed to operate the money-losing enterprise, Aubert and Langlois ceded their rights to Frossard de Lilbonne, who in turn passed it to Pierre Auguste Daval in 1857.
[continued]
Wikipedia

Website.
Virtual tour (once inside, the grid in the top left is the easiest way to get around).


Casino de Monte Carlo.– Autour de la Roulette. –LL
Roulette Table c.1915
Salle Europe.


Casino de Monte Carlo, Salle Touzet (Trente et Quarante)
c.1920

Salle Touzet Nord

Trente et Quarante (Thirty & Forty) is a French card game Wikipedia article.


Monte-Carlo. — Façade nord du Casino.

Published Neurdien & Co, Paris. (1916-1918 or pre-1919)

Groudle Glen, Isle of Man

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The Water Wheel, Groudle Glen, Isle of Man

On the back is printed:
British Empire Exhibition
Manx Kiosk, London —– 192-
Having a good time here but expect to have a better when I meet you in the Isle of Man.

Issued by the Isle of Man (Official) Board of Advertising and Information Free from C. P. Clague, Secretary.

1920s. (British Empire Exhibition was 1924-25)

Google Maps.

From Isle of Man: Groudle Glen, via the Wayback Machine:
In the year 1890, an enterprising businessman by the name of Mr. Richard Maitby Broadbent who owned the Bibaloe Beg farm in Onchan, purchased the lease for the whole of the Groudle Glen area from The Howstrake Estate. At that time the glen was in its natural state with grass, ferns and very few trees, indeed when the glen first opened to the public it was known as “The Fern Glen of the Isle of Man”.
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The development of the glen continued with trees being planted and the trademark rustic bridges built across the river. A pathway was made from the entrance beside the hotel to a rocky inlet approximately half a mile around the headlands. The inlet was a perfect natural bowl, sheltered from the winds and it was decided to use it to its full potential by creating a sea-lion pool. To achieve this, the inlet was dammed and closed off, so creating a lovely pool area in which to house not only the sea-lions but even a polar bear. …
Broadbent then hit on the idea of introducing yet another attraction, a narrow (two-foot) gauge railway to run from the inner glen to the sea-lion pool. The little railway was completed in 1896, using entirely local labour. Shortly after, Mr. Broadbent took delivery of a small locomotive, aptly named the “Sea-lion”, along with three small coaches, which had arrived from England. It was to be advertised in the local press and guide books as the world’s smallest railway.
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The polar bears were retired during the Great War. Their keeper at the time, Mr. Fred Kelly who lived in the cottage, the ruins of which can still be seen at the lower entrance to the glen, he had been under instructions to shoot them, but was unable to face the task, however we do not know the final outcome. The second World War saw the closure of the pool, and the sea-lions released.

Unfortunately when the line reopened in 1946 the Groudle company suffered badly at the hands of what had become a new post-war phenomenon, vandals. With a landslide on the headland making it impossible for the trains to reach the pool and the added fact that the sea lions were not replaced, it was decided to close the line.

Water Wheel

The glen has a water wheel and wheelhouse, which were first operated in about 1895. The wheel provided power for the glen’s fairy lights, and water was pumped up the glen to the hotel at the top. Later in its life, it was to become a feature in a well known 1986 BBC TV series called ‘Lovejoy”.

Images on Wikipedia Commons (more recent photos)

Isle of Man: Things to do

Public buildings, Pompeii,

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List of all pages for Pompeii


Pompei, Quartiere dei Soldati
Soldier Quarters

Behind the scene of the theatre stands a large rectangular enclosure, one hundred and eighty-three feet long and one hundred and forty-eight wide, surrounded by a Doric colonnade, having twenty-two columns on the longer sides and seventeen on the shorter. The columns are constructed of volcanic tufa, fluted two-thirds of their height, covered with stucco and painted, the lower part red, and the upper alternately red and yellow, except the two centre ones of the east and west sides, the upper parts of which are blue. The surrounding walls were also covered with stucco, painted red below, with yellow above. On the northern side there was a direct communication with both theatres, and the portico of the building must have been of great utility to the spectators, affording additional shelter from the rains when the porticos of the great theatre might have been crowded.

At the time when this building was excavated (1766 and several following years) it was supposed to be a barrack, and obtained the name of the Soldiers’ Quarters. Afterwards, however, from its situation near the Forum Triangulare, it came to be considered as a market-place, and was called the Forum Nundinarium, or weekly market. But the arguments on which this view rests are far from being convincing. That it was a sort of barrack hardly admits of a doubt, both from the nature of the place and the objects found in it ; but it may be a question whether it was intended for the soldiery or for the gladiators exhibited in the amphitheatre. That a town like Pompeii must have had accommodation for its garrison is evident enough, and the building in question seems excellently adapted for such a purpose. The arms found in it, however, were exclusively of the kind used by gladiators ; not a single soldier’s weapon was discovered, while the paintings and graffiti had also reference to gladiatorial combats. Among these graffiti, traced with a hard point on the surface of the ninth column of the east side, was the representation of a fighting gladiator, with these letters, XX Valerius. It has been detached from the wall and carried to the Museum. From these circumstances, Garrucci designated the place as a ludus gladiatorius or school for gladiators, in which view he has been followed by Overbeck.
From Pompeii. Its history, buildings, and antiquities (1871)

Google Maps, approximate area & as best I can tell.
AD 79: destruction and rediscovery


Pompei Portico del Foro Civile
Portico of the Civil Forum.

General area, Google Maps.
General area, Google Street View.
AD 79: destruction and rediscovery


Pompei. Arco di Trionfo e foro.
Arch of Triumph [at entrance to] forum
c.1910
Pubisher: Ettore Ragozino, Naples

Street View

 

La Grande Roue, Paris

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PARIS — La Grande Roue.
c.1910

Le Village Suisse–site of the 1900 Exposition Universelle de Paris

100 metre high Ferris wheel, built in 1899 for the Exposition Universelle and dismantled 1920.

Ferris wheels were a new thing at the time. The first one was built just a few years earlier for the world’s fair in Chicago in 1893. A mere 80 metres in height.

A REVOLVING PALACE.
Paris is to out-Ferris Ferris. The great Chicago wheel is to be outdone in the universal exposition of 1900. The special wonder of the French fair will be the revolving palace, designed by the eminent architect, M. Charles Devie. It is a hexagonal shaft, 350 feet in height, divided into 25 storeys. The entire palace will be coveted with nickel plate, aluminum, ornamental tiling and glass. This gorgeous structure will be illuminated by 20,000 incandescent and 5,000 arc lights of varied colours, so as to bring out clearly all the decorative lines, balconies, turrets, pillars, and statues. In the loft of the palace will be a chime of 64 bells and a powerful organ, played upon by the aid of compressed air. The entire structure will turn on a pivot, the motive power being hydraulic pressure. It will make one revolution an hour.
Coburg Leader, 22 July 1899

All the numbers:
GIANT WHEEL OF PARIS.
A trial of the “Great Wheel of Paris” was made lately. It stands on Avenue de Suffern, opposite the celebrated gallery of machines of the Exposition of 1889. The idea of such a construction is due to Mr. Graydon, an officer of marines of the United States navy, who took out a patent for it in 1893. The present project emanates from an English society. The first wheel of this kind was constructed for the Chicago Exhibition, but it did not attain the dimensions of the one under consideration. The metal is steel, furnished by the Societe des Forges et Acieries de Haumont (Nord). The wheel is designed to revolve around a horizontal axis situated at 220ft. above the ground. At its periphery there is a series of cars that are carried along in the rotary motion of the apparatus. The diameter of the wheel is exactly 93 metres (305ft.). At the lowest level the cars will be 10ft. above ground, and their highest point will be 315ft. above the surface. The total weight of the wheel, inclusive of the empty cars and exclusive of the axis and frames, is 1,430,0001b. The axis weighs 79,2001b., and the two frames 873,4001b. The total weight is, therefore, 2,382,6001bs. Each car is capable of accommodating 3 Persons, and the number of cars is 41 supposing the average weight of each passenger to be 1541b., the total load upon the foundation will be 1,167 tons. The foundation is of concrete made Portland cement. Two excavations, 181 square and 39ft. deep, were made, and filled with a mixture of sand, pebbles, and pure cement, without the addition of any hydraulic lime. The wheel makes oil revolution in 20 minutes, inclusive of stoppages. Access to the cars is obtained through a system of stairways and landings so arranged that eight cars can be filled and emptied simultaneously, without any blockade, in less than one minute. Each car is 42.5ft. in length. The wheel is to be illuminated with electricity for night use.
The Australasian, 24 April 1899

From “A Soldier’s Letter”:
Next I went to the Eifell Tower. I could not go to the top on account of the war, but it is the highest in the world. Near there is the “Grande Rue” (big road), which is a huge “ferris wheel,” 400 feet high. It is the largest in the world and takes 20 minutes to go round, and from the top all Paris can be seen.
The Wyalong Advocate and Mining, Agricultural and Pastoral Gazette, 9 April 1918

More pictures.
More pictures with a focus on location, then and 2015.
Contemporary description (in French, rather awful translation).
The Paris Gigantic Wheel and Varieties Company Limited (This put the Wheel in a bigger context, in terms of the Exposition and the world in general at the time.)

 

Houses, Pompeii

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List of all pages for Pompeii


POMPEI – Casa di Marco Lucrezio
House of Marco Lucrezio

Dated 1917
Publishers: Trampetti & Migliaccio

Google Street View
AD 79: destruction and rediscovery

Even though the House IX 3,5/24 was at the time of its discovery a fairly popular target for visits, it lost its attraction quite soon to larger and more luxuriously decorated houses at Pompeii. The insula has been closed from tourists for most of the past century. One of the most beautiful sights in it, the statues in the garden were removed in the 1960s after the Silenos statue standing in the niched fountain was stolen.
Research history of insula IX 3


Pompei – Casa della degil Amorini d’oro
House of the Golden Cupids

Google Street View (reverse view)
AD 79: destruction and rediscovery


Pompei – Casa del Fauno
House of the Faun

Google Maps
Google Street View
AD 79: destruction and rediscovery
Wikipedia.


Pompei – Casa di Panza
House of Pansa

Google Maps
Google Street View
AD 79: destruction and rediscovery


On back:
The Peristyle, House of Vettil, restored, Pompeii, Italy–Pompeii is an ancient town of Campania, situated on the shore of the Bay of Naples, almost at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. It was destroyed A.D. 79, and after its discovered in modern times, has been known as a place of world-wide fame, and having the most interesting relics preserved to us from antiquity

Google Maps.
AD 79: destruction and rediscovery
Khan Academy.
Wikipedia.