James Plimpton created a pair of “dry-land” skates in 1863. His design had two parallel sets of wheels, one pair under the ball of the foot and the other pair under the heel. The four wheels were made of boxwood and worked on rubber springs. The skates were considered the birth of the modern four-wheel roller skates.
In 1923, S.M. Soule and Oliver Cromwell leased Kent’s Hall (which sat on the lot south of the Eagles Lodge). They used the building for a roller skating rink. The men purchased 100 pairs of roller skates and remodeled the hall, laying a new floor.
This pair of roller skates is the only pair in your Museum’s collection. It is unknown if they were used in the skating rink in Kent’s Hall.
Rollerskates