Two boys fish along the shore of Chautauqua Lake as a steamboat departs from Fairpoint in 1886. Photo courtesy of Chautauqua institution Archives
“The Chautauqua Assembly opened as a Sunday-school institute, — a two-weeks’ session of lectures, normal lessons, sermons, devotional meetings, conferences, and illustrative exercises, with recreative features in concerts, fireworks, and one or two humorous lectures. It was called by some a ‘camp meeting.’ But a ‘camp meeting’ it was not, in any sense, except that most of us lived in tents.”
— John Heyl Vincent, The Chautauqua Movement
A camp meeting it was not; it was more.
One hundred and fifty years ago, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller organized the first Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly, and an intrepid group of thinkers, learners and doers gathered August 1874 with a goal of creating a community to learn, converse and grow together through education, enrichment and dialogue.
Chautauqua Institution was born.
One hundred years ago, the Institution celebrated 50 years in existence with a full day of traditions dedicated not only to the legacy of Chautauqua, but to the people who built it and carried on its legacy.
Fifty years ago, Chautauqua celebrated its 100-year anniversary with 12 hours of festivities.
Tonight, Chautauquans will flock to Institution landmarks like Bestor Plaza, the Amphitheater and the Athenaeum Hotel for an evening commemorating 150 years of the Institution’s seasons and stories, and looking toward the future of Chautauqua’s lasting legacy.
Today welcomes a special celebration of an age-old tradition: Old First Night. The annual event commemorates the first night of Chautauqua’s season when the Summer Assembly was first established — always on the first Tuesday in August, though no longer the season’s “first” night. Falling in line with Old First Nights before, today is filled to the brim with celebration.
“I think in many ways, Old First Night is going to be a celebration of our history as well as an opportunity to celebrate what lies ahead for the Institution,” said Geof Follansbee, a lifelong Chautauquan and the senior philanthropic adviser to the president.
From left, Institution trustee Anita Lin, President Michael E. Hill, and Senior Vice President and Chief Program Officer Deborah Sunya Moore participate in Old First Night on Aug. 1, 2023, in the Amp.
Such milestones only come so often, and at Chautauqua have been the cause of much pomp and circumstance.
According to The Chautauquan Daily, 1924’s Old First Night saw the formal dedications of a Summer Schools Dormitory presented by Dean Spencer, and Smith Wilkes Hall presented by Mrs. C.M. Wilkes — on top of an already-packed day of celebration. The full day of festivities began — in classic Chautauqua fashion — bright and early at 7:15 a.m.
The anniversary program began with Old First Night exercises in the Amphitheater and continued on with, among many other things, summer school classes and a tour of the summer schools, a devotional hour, a morning lecture, motion picture screenings, Chautauqua Literary Scientific Circle class meetings, and a commemorative Fiftieth Anniversary Address by president of the Rockefeller Foundation and Honorary President of Chautauqua Institution Dr. George E. Vincent.
Fifty years later, to celebrate the Institution’s centennial, the 1974 itinerary began with a ceremony issuing a Chautauqua Centennial Commemorative United Postal Service Stamp, a special Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra performance guest-conducted by long-time NBC “Tonight Show” conductor and Tulsa Philharmonic musical director Skitch Henderson, and a picnic dinner with live music.
The night continued with the many beloved annual Old First Night traditions, a Cleveland Play House production, a massive group rendition of “God Bless America” and “Hallelujah Chorus” and, last but certainly not least, a “gigantic six-foot-high birthday cake,” according to the Daily.
In 2024, for Chautauqua’s sesquicentennial, the day is just as packed. The Chautauqua Community Band will perform at 12:15 p.m. today in the Amphitheater as part of the 150th celebration, under the baton of Community Band Music Director Aidan Chamberlain, and Thursday Morning Brass will perform at 6 p.m. tonight in the Amp in advance of the Old First Night Celebration at 6:30 p.m.
From left, Jan Yauch, Maddie Hess and Mike Yauch raise handkerchiefs for the Drooping of the Lillies on Aug. 3, 2021, in the Amphitheater, the first Old First Night following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vincent’s own litany, prepared in 1874 for the first day of the first assembly, is still used to this day — the Vespers, which will be led by Senior Pastor Eugene Taylor Sutton, represents a direct link to Chautauqua’s beginning. It’s a deep, “real honoring of our past,” Follansbee said.
The celebration will continue by welcoming the youngest Chautauquans from Children’s School and Boys’ and Girls’ Club onto the stage; having spent so much of his youth in Boys’ Club, this is Follansbee’s favorite Old First Night tradition.
It’s one of Institution Senior Vice President and Chief Program Officer Deborah Sunya Moore’s favorite traditions, too — both she and Follansbee see these youth of Chautauqua as integral to both its legacy, and its future.
“My favorite (tradition) is seeing all of the generations gathered in the Amphitheater when we have the youth on stage,” Moore said. The very youngest Chautauquans, she said, remind her of her own children growing up on the grounds.
Befitting a birthday, the Institution will celebrate the sesquicentennial with a sing-along performance of “Happy Birthday” on the Massey Memorial Organ, and then yield the stage to puppetry collective Squonk, and a show for all generations of Chautauquans. The troupe will wrap its performance by leading everyone gathered in the Amphitheater down to the lawn of the Athenaeum Hotel, with enough time to enjoy a cupcake or two before a 9 p.m. drone fireworks display over Chautauqua Lake. That show is set to go on even in cases of light wind or light rain, with only the heaviest of either prompting a schedule change — Chautauquans are encouraged to keep track of any notices posted to chq.org throughout the day today.
“It is a bigger and better birthday party for the 150th,” Moore said, “and I am hoping that not only generational Chautauquans come out to celebrate, but that first-time and new Chautauquans come out to celebrate. Celebrating our sesquicentennial, moving into the next 150 years, we want to broaden our impact and include more people that consider themselves Chautauquans.”
Her hope is that Chautauqua’s work and mission continues to spread, “broadening and diversifying our audience for the future.”
“That’s really the aspiration of Chautauqua,” she said. “It’s not just to celebrate the generations past, but to celebrate the generations past with that hope for broadening and diversifying generations in the future.”
For Follansbee, Old First Night is an opportunity to reflect on the legacy of the Institution and, personally, the role Chautauqua has played in his own life.
“For me, it marks the longevity of this place and it reminds me of the importance of Chautauqua in my own development as a human being,” he said.
