Hygienic Promenades

Postrevolutionary Paris witnessed a brief flowering of commercial gardens, precursors to the modern-day amusement park, which cultivated nature, exercise, and health in an urbanizing context. Bridging the eighteenth-century jardin-spectacle and the Second Empire network of public parks, pleasure grounds such as the Grand Tivoli and the Beaujon garden offered a range of activities including gymnastic games, bicycling, and, most strikingly of all, exhilarating rides on early roller coasters known as montagnes russes. Situated on the periphery of a rapidly densifying city and abstracting natural forms for urban consumption, these rides integrated discourses of hygiene and recreation. Analyzing these short-lived curiosities from the vantage points of medical, cultural, and urban history, this article argues that the montagnes russes helped disseminate modern conceptions of health and gender in popular culture

Aesthetics · Amusement · Archaeology · Art · Consumption (sociology · Context (archaeology · Geography · Personal hygiene · Pleasure · Political science · Recreation · Situated · Sociology · Spectacle · Visual arts · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Psychology · Social Psychology