[The Chautauqua Hall]

This picture shows a side view of the Chautauqua Hall, once located on the side of Welcome Mountain, where the Jaycee Youth Center is now [2010] located (behind the Grand Theater.) It was taken, perhaps,in late spring or early summer--possibly in the morning. The photograph is featured in "TIME WAS in Mineral Wells..." on page 50. The building departed existence in 1912, after only about seven years of service. The Chautauqua movement began in 1874 in an eponymous town in New York (it is still there). It was conceived as a form of adult education, which featured a set of touring lectures. Before the advent of moving pictures and the radio, Chautauqua was immensely popular. For example, William Jennings Bryan (he of the famous "Cross of Gold" speech)--and other people--gave various lectures and orations at this Chautauqua hall. H.L. Mencken ("Prejudices:First Series", published in 1919) speaks disparagingly of "...oafish, witless buffoonishness [sic] of the chautauquas [sic] and the floor of Congress...." Mr. Mencken, though, had a reputation for disparaging everything (that was American) in his sight. This remark seems to be his only direct comment on the movement. He makes reference to Chautauqua only tangentially otherwise. One might surmise, therefore, that television (which supplanted Chautauqua) followed a parallel route in its later years