Fourteen miles to the north and east of Boston at the tip of a peninsula extending three or four miles into the sea is Nahant, which in the first half of the 19th century was Boston’s most fashionable resort during the summer season. The lively picture it presented is described in Margaret Morton Quincy’s evocative account of “a project of pleasure” with her mother and sister at Nahant in 1824 (The Articulate Sisters, ed. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Cambridge, 1946, p. 50–61).

Opinion was that Nahant’s location “for picturesque beauty and sublimity of scenery ... is not surpassed by any on the American coast.” Its hotel was well known for the excellence of its table and for the variety of the entertainment. “Large and commodious stables are appended to the hotel, and a bathing house for warm and cold baths, and floating baths for those who may prefer the bracing xiaction of sea water.... Nahant has many amusements—angling with the rod may be enjoyed as a pleasant recreation, standing on the rocks.... Game too is abundant in the vicinity; but there are few amusements or pleasures superior to that of riding, at suitable hours of the day, on the beach. A beautiful building in imitation of a Grecian temple, stands on an eminence near the hotel, in which are two elegant billiard rooms. There are also convenient covered bowling alleys.” (Bowen’s Picture of Boston, 2d edn., Boston, 1833, p. 300–303; see also, below, p. 305.)

The engraving, in which many of these attractions are shown, is the work of Ammin & Smith from the drawing by J. Rp. . Penniman. It was among the plates Bowen used when publishing Caleb H. Snow, History of Boston ... with Some Account of the Environs (2d edn., Boston, 1828, following p. 427).