On May 20, 1887, bicycle enthusiasts were elevating their vehicles of basic transportation to vehicles of pleasure and competition. The American Wheelmen, in their eighth annual convention in St. Louis, Missouri, celebrated the sport with races and a banquet.

The Kings County chapter of the League of American Wheelman had their headquarters at 159 Clymer St. in Williamsburg, a neighborhood that is at the center of today’s lively bicycle movement in the city. New York celebrates Bike Month in May and has advocacy groups such as Transportation Alternatives that fight for more and safer bike lanes in the city streets.

In the 1890s, there were many bicycle clubs that took advantage of the pleasing terrain offered by Prospect Park and Ocean Parkway, such as the Bedford Bicycle Club, Wayside Wheelmen, Rambling Wheelmen, the Ildrion Bicycle Club and the Brooklyn Bicycle Club. The Wheelmen even hosted annual meetings in Williamsburg with bicycle races of one, two, three and five mile distances.

But early cycling was not all fun and games. Just as it is today with the “culture war� between New Yorkers who commute to work on two wheels versus those who go on four, “wheeling� in the 1890s also had its detractors, as well as local politicians who tried to sort out the rules of the road for everyone. In an Aug. 2, 1897 editorial in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle titled “Bicycles Are With Us,� the unnamed author writes, “The bicycle is the source of the most happiness when its history does not get printed.�

The writer continued, “It’s a new kind of news that half fills the paper in these days. It did not appear before the day of the bicycle. Look at it: Bicycle rider falls from a live wire and is killed. Eighteen scorchers arrested for reckless riding. Boy arrested for breaking glass and strewing it over the street in order to injure bicycles and their riders. Bicycle rider killed by a driver who ran his carriage pole through his body…� The author goes on and on, but we get the idea.

And in a statement that could easily apply to the relationship between cyclists and motorists today, the author writes, “There are horse drivers, who, encountering a wheel on a lonely rode, cannot resist an expression of their opinion by blocking the highway, or by running over to the left, or doing some other thing to endanger or annoy its rider. And there are wheelmen who are just the same sort of people on their bicycles.�

Another article printed in the Eagle on August 20, 1896 reported an upcoming “anti-cycling mass meeting� run by a Charlotte Smith of the Woman’s Rescue League. Ms. Smith’s concerns with cycling related specifically to the moral and physical harm it could do to young ladies. She was however, the “butt of innumerable jokes,� according to the Eagle. I’ll let her speak for herself, she was quoted at length in the article.

Bicycling, she said, was “undoubtedly injurious to some girls. I have this from some of the most eminent physicians of the country that as a result of the craze for bicycling more cases of kidney as well as other complaints have been caused in the past three years than have ever been known before. The physical condition of the average girl will not permit of her taking long rides on a bicycle and on account of the exhilarating effects of the spin of a wheel, the practice is kept up until before she knows it the rider will find herself a physical wreck, burdened with many serious diseases.

“All this ‘pure air of heaven’ racket makes me weary of life. I have never yet seen a woman who looked well on a bicycle and as for riding being good for the complexion I take no stock in that excuse whatever… “But by far the gravest question to be considered in connection with the bicycle is its effect upon the morals of our young folks. The popular stand taken by the public in regard to the bicycle girl, representing her as an American woman of independence, and capable of taking care of herself in any predicament, has had a demoralizing effect upon youthful riders. This sentiment has instilled in girls the impression ... that they can go where they choose, whether or not they are accompanied by a male escort. This feeling grows upon the girl as her riding becomes more general, and her spins are soon taken in the evening as well as during the day. This continues and she grows further and further from the influence of her parents…�

Brooklyn’s aldermen were “wrestling with the bicycle question� as early as 1880. The issue at hand, still very much alive today, was whether bicycles were entitled to use of the streets the same as other vehicles and whether the same rules of the road should apply. The issue at a meeting of the Board of Alderman in 1880 broke down to these competing points: “It has been without exception decided that the bicycle is a vehicle, and as such has equal right with other vehicles, to the use of the streets without discriminating restrictions� versus those who complained that “bicycles and their riders when in motion frighten horses.�

But the old frightened horse argument did not hold up that day, since it was noted that “since time immemorial horses have been frightened of various objects� and the aldermen decided to repeal restrictions on bicycle riding in the streets, such as that bicycles should not be used on Sundays. It was, however, adopted that “every bicyclist who rides a bicycle during the hours between sunset and sunrise shall carry attached to his bicycle a lamp.� Early reflectors?

The popularity of cycling was greatly enhanced in 1878 when Colonel Albert Pope, a retired Union officer from Boston, began to build his Columbia Bicycle and found he could hardly keep up with the demand. His Columbia, called a velocipede, had a large front wheel.

As early as November 1868, this type of bike was introduced at the New York Athletic Games, and New York City as well as much of the U.S. experienced a bicycle craze during the 1890s. While iron-wheeled models - bumpy, bone-shaking devices - had been around for decades, it was the “safety bicycle,� introduced in 1889, that really put America on the road.

—Compiled by P. Neidl

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