The rediscovery of America: Elite automobile touring

Abstract

The automobile has radically changed tourist habits this century. In the first decade it was enthusiastically embraced by a small, wealthy elite. In America this elite “rediscovered” the romantic northeastern scenery painted by the Hudson Valley School of artists. This process is documented both in the general elite tourist literature of the period and in a specific case study from an elite summer colony. In the second decade “mass followed class.” Cheaper automobiles allowed the middle classes to follow the elite tourists of the first decade. The elite began to lose interest in the automobile as something exclusive to them, and turned their attention to the possibilities for touring of aviation.