Greetings from my hometown - NYC views
 c. 1900's through the Sixties

The Cyclone was the best of the wooden 
roller coasters - it's still operating today

Please be patient: there are lots of cool graphics on this page

Gallery IV - Coney Island

Coney Island and Central Park in NY, and Palisades Park in NJ, 
were my playgrounds while growing up. So was Greenwich Village, 
but that's on another page. Here are some neat views of Coney Island 
at the turn of the century. I'll be adding the 50's and 60's eventually

pre-Wonder Wheel

History - Excerpted from the PBS show - American Experience: Coney Island
The Beginnings

In the 1890's, George C. Tilyou, a young showman, visited the Chicago World's Fair and tried to buy George Ferris's 250-foot-tall wheel on the spot. He failed, went home to Coney Island, and ordered a wheel half the size, and tnen put up a sign that said, "On this site will be erected the world's largest Ferris Wheel." By the time the machine arrived, Tilyou had rented out enough concession space to pay for it.

Tilyou's main competition was Captain Paul Boyton, who had spent most of his life on the rivers of the world, paddling himself to international fame in an inflatable rubber suit. At Coney, he opened Sea Lion Park, a ramshackle cluster of attractions featuring a boat ride down a shoot-the-chutes. As soon as he saw it, Tilyou wanted a park of his own, but he needed an attraction to rival Boyton's chutes. He found it in England, a mechanical horse race, and began laying out the sinuous iron track of his Steeplechase Ride. In 1897, Steeplechase Park opened its doors for the first time.

Steeplechase Funny Place - 1909 

Tilyou had discovered that people liked seeing shows, but they liked seeing people more. He had also discovered that men and women liked almost anything that allowed them to grab hold of each other. The attractions inside Steeplechase soon included the Earthquake Float, the Skating Floor, the Falling Statue, the Human Cage, the Revolving Seat, the Funny Stairway, the Eccentric Fountain, the Dancing Floor, the Electric Seat, the Human Roulette Wheel.

The Steeplechase

On July 28, 1907, fire broke out at Steeplechase, in the Cave of the Winds. The big wooden park burned for 18 hours. The next day, Tilyou had a sign up where the entrance had been. "To inquiring friends: I have troubles today that I did not have yesterday. I had troubles yesterday that I have not today. On this site will be erected shortly a better, bigger, greater Steeplechase Park. Admission to the burning ruins: 10 cents." [George C. Tilyou]. Nine months later, the park was open again. This time, Tilyou covered everything with a glass-and-steel shed and called it the Pavilion of Fun. It made Steeplechase impervious to the weather. Tilyou's rivals claimed he went to church to pray for rain.

Steeplechase Park c. 1920

Along with competitors, there came Luna Park and Dreamland. About 45,000 men, women and children strolling along Surf Avenue stopped and rubbed their eyes and stood in wonder. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. Thompson and Dundy had decorated their forest of towers and minarets with 250,000 incandescent lights. It was, one man said, "an electric Eden." In full view of thousands in tiers of boxes and promenades, the spotted horses, the clowns, the acrobats, jugglers, hoop artists, intellectual elephants, Arabian pyramidists, tumblers, contortionists disport under the crackling lashes of the ringmaster."

Luna Park - Electric Tower c. 1920

Luna Park - Trip To Mars 1913

Then came another competitor named Reynolds. Reynolds built his park close to the others on a colossal scale. It was to be a catalogue of the future, an inventory of the strange and a compendium of the century to come. The newest technology, the latest science, the odd, the bizarre, the far-flung would be at home in Dreamland.

The park was spread beneath the 375-foot Beacon Tower. At night, its imperial searchlight beamed 50 miles out over the Atlantic, disorienting ships on their way into New York Harbor. Beneath it, gondolas drifted through the Canals of Venice. Trains carried patrons through the Swiss Alps where they were cooled by blasts of refrigerated mountain air. There was a Train of the Future. The wreck-proof Leap-Frog Railroad allowed two trains to pass each other without mishap on the same track.

Dreamland c. 1910

Human beings from every part of the globe were brought to Dreamland and put on display. The park manager, Sam Gumpertz, acquired a dozen Somali warriors from French Equatorial Africa and an entire village of Eskimos. In 1905, he hustled 51 tribesmen from the Philippines past startled immigration officials. Gumpertz himself recruited all the citizens of Lilliputia, a half-scale European village which served as year-round home to 300 midgets. At Creation, visitors journeyed backward through 60 centuries of biblical history to the Divine Origin of all things. Next door, vast panoramic exhibits foreshadowed the End of the World and Hell.

Dreamland never became as popular as Luna or Steeplechase, but its cascade of lights completed a skyline unlike anything else in the world. Coney was more than three big amusement parks, it was a city. The newspapers called it the "city of fire."

May 27, 1911, was opening day of the season. At two o'clock in the morning, workmen were still busy at Hell Gate in Dreamland when the circuitry started acting up. Light bulbs burst. Someone knocked over a bucket of hot tar and it caught fire. In minutes, Hell Gate was ablaze. Nearby fire companies got there right away, but everything was lath and plaster, wood and tar and paint. Half an hour after the first alarm, the Dreamland tower was a column of fire so tall and bright, it could be seen in Manhattan. Animals from Bostock's Circus ran, panicked and burning, out onto Surf Avenue. At three o'clock, the Dreamland tower collapsed. L.A. Thompson's old scenic railway disappeared and the Great Whirlwind coaster and finally, the old Centennial Observation Tower itself fell. Thirty-three fire companies had gotten to the scene, but it was a change in the wind that saved what was left of Coney. There was talk of rebuilding Dreamland, but it never happened. Two years later, George C. Tilyou died. Fred Thompson went bankrupt and lost Luna Park. World War I came. The public fascination with recreated disasters declined.

Dreamland night view