The Enduring Coney Island

Beginnings
 It would be impossible to describe the history of the amusement park without paying homage to Brooklyn, New York’s Coney Island. The development that started in 1829 on this small strip of land would herald the first golden age of the amusement park. It also reigned as the gold standard design of amusement parks until Walt Disney opened his theme park in the mid-twentieth century.

Coney Island was originally a series of sand dunes and scrub land along a five mile stretch where Brooklyn meets the sea. Development began in 1829 when a hotel, called the Coney Island House, and Shell Road was built. In the 1850s, horse drawn streetcars transported visitors from Brooklyn to Coney Island. Twenty-five years later, the Prospect Park & Coney Island Railroad began operation and provided the first rapid and stable transportation service to the Island. With the huge increase in traffic flow (the railroad moved one million passengers in its first year alone). Three major hotels, serving either the upper or middle classes, opened during the years of 1877 to 1880. However, the low fee to travel and popularity of the location attracted unsavory elements such as prostitution, gambling, and conning. Such a presence was tolerated by the so-called boss of Coney Island, John McKane.

McKane was essentially the despot of this small piece of New York real estate. He was the police chief, the head of the board of health, and the superintendent of Sunday schools. He had the authority to lease land, arrange contracts, and sanction land deals with his chosen colleagues. He was arrested in 1893 and imprisoned one year later for fixing elections. It is with this backdrop of development, criminals, and McKane that the recognizable form of the American amusement park developed.

Sea Lion Park
 Constructed in 1895 by Captain Paul Boyton, Sea Lion Park is known as the first enclosed amusement park with an admission fee. Boyton had already established a successful park when he in Chicago at 63rd and Drexel in July 1894 before establishing himself at Coney Island. The 16-acre park became the home of Boyton's highly successful traveling aquatic circus that headline 40 trained sea lions. Boyton was also well known for his creativity, having swam across the English Channel in an inflatable rubber suit that he designed. He applied this creative talent to create the Water Chute, which first opened in Chicago in July 4, 1894. When he built a second version of this ride at Coney Island he adopted the name Shoot-the-Chutes, which would enter the amusement park lexicon.

Other attractions were added to the park, include the infamous Flip Flap. The Flip Flap ride, designed by Lina Beecher, was the first commercial looping coaster ever constructed. Unfortunately, the 25 foot diameter circular loop imparted too much g-force on the riders, causing whiplash and other neck injuries. The ride quickly closed and the world would have to wait nearly 50 years for the first successful looping roller coaster. Boyton also added an old mill style ride called Cages of Wild Wolves, and a ballroom. However, he could not keep up the pace of new attraction introductions that the public craved. In 1903, Sea Lion Park would be replaced by Luna Park.

Steeplechase Park
 George Tilyou's interest in amusement parks began with his visit to the Colombian Exhibition on his honeymoon. Tilyou combined the many new mechanical amusement attractions and combined them inside an enclosed park to create the very successful Steeplechase Park. The payment of the 25 cent entrance fee allowed the visitor to experience any attraction as many times as he or she wished. Thus the "pay one price" ticket was created.

The main attraction of Steeplechase Park was J. W. Cawdry's mechanical horse ride from which the park's name was derived. The Steeplechase ride consisted of eight double-saddled horses that traversed undulating hills from the starting gate to the finish line. Other attractions included a LaMarchus Thompson scenic railway, naptha-powered Venetian boats, and Thompson & Dundy's Trip to the Moon. The park itself was a tremendous success. It survived a fire on July 28, 1907 that destroyed all 25 of its attractions, the Great Depression, and two world wars. It finally closed its doors forever in 1964.

Luna Park
 Frederic Thompson and Elmer "Skip" Dundy's created an interactive cyclorama entitled "Trip to the Moon" for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. On this ride, guests would embark on a fantastic journey to the moon, complete with spaceship trip and visit with moon people on the lunar surface. Tilyou was so intrigued by this fantasy ride that he added the attraction to his Steeplechase Park. It success inspired Thompson and Dundy to pull the attraction out of Steeplechase Park after only a one year run to build their own amusement park. They purchased the deteriorating Sea Lion Park and built it into a 22 acre amusement center named Luna Park.

Thompson drew from his experience in creating pavilions for world fairs when he designed Luna Park. Ornate oriental architecture and hundreds of thousands of electric lights dominated the park. It was like a miniature Colombian Exhibition of Chicago, but with the Midway spirit replacing aristocratic pretense. When the park opened in May 1903, visitors where overwhelmed by the greatest concentration of electric lights in the world and all the attractions they announced. It was a huge success.

The midway, with attractions such as the Canals of Venice, an Eskimo village, a Dutch windmill, and a Japanese Garden, was the central design element at Luna Park. But the most significant innovations were the illusionary attractions with which Thompson and Dundy had shown such talent. Joining their flagship Trip to the Moon creation was Fire and Flames, where firemen regularly combat the flames engulfing a four story apartment building, a recreation of the Johnstown flood of 1889 and the Galveston flood of 1900, a Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea attraction, and the simulated eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

 

The untimely deaths of Dundy and Thompson, in 1907 and 1919, respectively, spelled the end of Luna Park. Its subsequent owners did not invest in the upkeep of the park and it fell into disrepair. Despite two major renovations, the park failed to attract a significant number of visitors. A large fire wiped away Luna Park in 1946.

Dreamland
 The third major park to open at Coney Island was William H. Reynolds' Dreamland. A career politician, Reynolds built his park to emulate the White City of the Columbian Exhibition supplemented with standard amusement park rides. It was essentially an amusement park with cultural pretense. The park opened in 1904, but failed garner much public interest. Seven years later, an electrical short at the Hell's Gate ride burned Dreamland to the ground.