Definition of "amenity"

The harbor of Port Royal, rendered gloomy by recollections of misery, was avoided ; and after searching the coast and discovering places, which were so full of amenity, that melancholy itself could not but change its humor, as it gazed, the followers of Calvin planted themselves on the banks of the river May.

1834, George Bancroft, chapter II, in A History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent to the Present Time, volume I, Boston: Charles Bowen, page 71

The Castle is an antique extent of ground, which now they call Marsfield, and would have ben a fitting area to have plac’d the Ducal palace in. The suburbs are large, the prospects sweete, with other amenities, not omitting the flower gardens, in which all the inhabitants excel.

1671, John Evelyn, edited by William Bray, Memoirs, new edition, volume II, London: Henry Colburn, published 1827, page 354

Suburbia was the prescribed antidote to the dreariness of the hypertrophied industrial city—and most American cities had never been anything but that. They were short on amenity, overcrowded, and artless. Americans were sick of them and saw no way to improve them.

2005, James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency, Grove Atlantic, page 40