Coney Island
NEW YORK, NY
TRANSIT COMPANIES
looking to attract riders during the not-so-busy evenings and weekends hit on the idea of making the end of the line a destination. On the outskirts of American cities large and small, so-called trolley parks rewarded long-haul passengers with swimming, games, music and dancing.
A seaside destination from the 1870s onward, Brooklyn’s Coney Island was known as Heaven at the End of a Subway Ride. Visitors bought tickets for steampowered attractions such as an elevator that carried them to the top of a 300-foot-tall iron tower, a handcarved carousel, and the Switchback Railroad, one of the world’s first roller coasters.
GOLDEN AGE
Coney Island’s Sea Lion Park opened in 1895 with a new concept: paid admission to get into the fenced grounds. Inside, visitors watched sea lion shows, rode the tight curves of the blackout-inducing Flip-Flap Railway, and tried the new “sport” of shooting the chute by riding a boat down a 300-foot-long trough at 40 miles per hour into an artificial lake.
Other famous amusement grounds, such as the rowdy Steeplechase Park and the ambitious Luna Park—lit up at night with 250,000 lights—opened on Coney Island within a few years.
Cities building parks copied many of Coney Island’s attractions—and sometimes its name. By the 1920s, nearly every major American city supported a park.
LET DOWN YOUR HAIR
In these new public spaces, people of different social and economic classes and backgrounds were cast together—literally, in the case of Steeplechase
Park’s Barrel of Love. And the Blowhole Theatre, where gusts of air from under the floor lifted women’s skirts, swept away Victorian protocol. (The cattle prod applied to male spectators was a quick buzzkill.)
A major exception was the exclusion of African Americans from most amusement parks and swimming pools until the 1940s, and in many cases, beyond.
STOP THE RIDE
During the Great Depression, attendance at parks declined and operators—still transit companies in many cases—could not maintain them. World War II caused shortages of the raw materials used to build rides.
After the war, as car ownership became the norm, the allure of taking a crowded streetcar to the old parks faded.