Mechanical Aesthetics: Picturesque Tourism and the Transportation Revolution in Pennsylvania (2014)
Mackintosh, Will B. (Author)
Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies
Volume: 1, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 88-105
In the 1830s, Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works was at the cutting edge of the transportation revolution. Travelers embraced the speed and convenience of the line, but struggled to articulate the aesthetic experience of new forms of travel. This article uses the narratives of John Alonzo Clark, a Philadelphia minister, to explore the ways in which Pennsylvania travelers applied existing categories of the beautiful, the sublime, and the picturesque to innovative technological experiences. Clark and travelers like him found that mechanized transportation on the Main Line of Public Works heightened their experience of the landscape and distilled the older categories to their essence. Far from perceiving a tension between modern technology and landscape appreciation, these travelers found that together the two created novel and pleasurable aesthetic experiences.
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