Central Park was a focal point, providing lush green spaces and cooling waters that offered relief from the urban heat. The park’s numerous attractions, including concerts and boat rides, were heavily promoted as natural air conditioning, making it a cooler escape within the city.
New York’s waterfront areas, such as Coney Island, added to the appeal. Advertisements depicted families enjoying the seaside, with amusement rides and boardwalks promising a refreshing getaway without leaving the city. This portrayal helped cement NYC as a desirable summer destination.
The city’s robust transportation network was another key selling point. With easy access to beaches, mountains and lakes, visitors could enjoy a variety of excursions. This convenience, combined with the city’s cultural and entertainment offerings, might indeed have made New York a versatile summer resort.
We’ve curated vintage photos and advertisements from this era to showcase how NYC was promoted as a summer destination. These images reveal the city’s efforts to attract and retain visitors. We can’t say whether or not this campaign convinced anyone that “the city itself is cool and comfortable” in the summer, but check out below how the Big Apple at least attempted to carve out a niche for itself as a top summer spot over a century ago.
New York City summer vacation: The summer resort! (1911)
The gateway to all mountain, lake & coast resorts of the east
New York City invites you to consider her claims as the most attractive and healthful SUMMER RESORT in the east, and extends you a cordial invitation to come and enjoy her thousand and one attractions.
On the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by rivers and bays, the climatic conditions are most healthful. Perpetually fanned by cooling breezes; the city itself is cool and comfortable during the summer months, while in many other eastern points, the thermometer registers high.
Hotels, the best-conducted and most modern in the world, advantageously located in the center of this great metropolis, offer the summer vacationist, for a short or lengthy visit, ideal accommodations at especially low rates during the summer months.
Unrivaled transportation facilities place one readily in touch with the most entertaining, novel and latest of summer pastimes. The charm of the seaside country or mountains is within your call; delightful trips by boat, motor, trolley or train enable you to enjoy a different and diversified outing every day of your visit; roof gardens high above the city’s flashing lights, outdoor theatres and restaurants, and a multitude of other summer pastimes provide an evening’s entertainment unequalled and obtainable nowhere but in New York City.
Opportunities to advantageously shop where modern fashion originates, to view the latest creation in art, to see the march of progress in every phase and exhibits exemplifying every industry, to participate in or witness any known outdoor sport, to indulge as fancy dictates in all that is best in summer pleasures, to enjoy a summer vacation in one of the greatest resort centres of the universe — where a visit for a day, week or month is replete with health, pleasure and happiness.
COME TO NEW YORK CITY FOR THIS YEAR’S VACATION and make your headquarters at hotels that set the standard for comfort, luxury and convenience.
Colonel Watterson says New York is the best summer resort
New York a cool and comfortable place in which to spend the summer vacation
“New York is the greatest summer resort in the world.” Colonel Henry M Watterson of Louisville, Kentucky, who has for years made the metropolis his headquarters during the good old summertime, annihilates the mistaken idea as to the heat in New York during the summer.
Says “Marse” Henry, who spends all of his summer vacations in the city, “New York is especially the greatest of summer resorts. Of the hundred days we call summer — I think I have said that before — fifty are charming in town; as to the other fifty, a few minutes will take one to fifty places in the country, or by the sea. There is nothing like this adjacent to London or Paris. Ostend is a baby compared to Coney Island. At all times, the roof gardens afford refreshment and delight.”
The charm of summering in New York lies in the unrivaled transportation facilities of the great seaport. One is enabled to stop at the most comfortable hotels in the world, and yet enjoy the country and the ocean…
In all the world, there is no such combination of the best delights of both city and country in summer days as it to be found within the borders of Greater New York. Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) – July 25, 1911
More views of New York long ago – the summer resort for your great vacation
NOW SEE THIS: Why old Atlantic City was a beautiful & popular vacation destination 100 years ago
