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Home , Luna Park, The Whip (ride)

Volume 3 • Number 1 •Summer 2003 NEW Y ORK 8 The Biggest Playground T

At the turn of the century, ’s was the first modern , LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OF CONGRESS LIBRARY where pleasure, play, and having fun

A ride in a goat cart was just one of became a billion-dollar business of smiles many ways that people could “laugh, enjoy themselves, and… spend money while being amused.”

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BY WOODY REGISTER glittering towers, and minarets. It seems unlikely that any amusement park today could move us as much as Luna Park stirred New Yorkers on that first night and for the rest of its first season. At precisely 8 p.m. on May 16 the electrical switches on Earth were thrown, and against the early evening darkness the ravel to just about any corner only a saloon, furniture store, outlines of Luna Park’s fantastic of the globe and you’ll find a and housing complex bear buildings burst into view, lit seaside carnival, urban “fun the appellation. There’s no by more than 200,000 small ,” or arcade with deafening amusement park anymore: it incandescent bulbs. The New video games called Luna Park. closed in the mid-1940s after York Times reported that In , , , a series of devastating fires. 45,000 people “rubbed their , , , But a hundred years after it eyes and stood in wonder and , , South Korea, opened, the idea of Luna pinched themselves to see if THungary, —anywhere, Park—and its vision of how there was not something that is, except the United life should be—is still very wrong somewhere.” Electric States—Luna Park is lingua much with us. illumination was already com- franca for the screaming Pleasure Palaces monplace in City, pleasure of roller coasters, the Luna Park did not invent Coney but the sheer intensity of the crazy driving of , Island; that “great breathing the giddy sky-scraping of space by the sea” had been Ferris wheels that anyone of luring metropolitan crowds to Luna Park was a playground dreamed up by any age would recognize as its seashore, its resort hotels, an amusement park. a man who cared little about making a lot of and its raucous amusement Ironically, although that thoroughfare called the Bowery singular name has now all but money: what he really wanted was to have fun. since the 1880s. By 1903, disappeared from our language, Coney Island had become a for the first half of the bustling summertime destina- spectacle was not meant to twentieth century Luna Park tion for millions of pleasure- cast light or eliminate darkness. was part and parcel of our seeking New Yorkers. Most of It was intended to jolt the American vernacular. In 1903 its diversions were respectable, imagination. As a bedazzled a pair of showmen, Fred although a few of them, like Eagle reporter Thompson and Elmer “Skip” gambling and prostitution, observed, “It seemed that a Dundy, opened a twenty-two- were not. But the concept of huge mantle of light had acre amusement park at pleasure that Thompson and been let down from the sky Coney Island in Brooklyn-by- Dundy introduced to Coney to disclose the domain of an the-sea. They named the resort Island on the night of May 16 unknown world.” after Dundy’s sister, and Luna was unlike anything New After paying a dime and Park subsequently became the Yorkers (or anyone else) had passing through a massive arch most popular summer desti- ever seen before: an exotic that spelled out “The Heart of nation on the North American city-within-a-city crowded with Coney Island” in such lights, continent. brilliant white palaces and the opening night crowd Today, near the park’s orig- ornamented with showering beheld a world that was a inal location on Surf Avenue, fountains, onion domes, combination of circus, dime

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But Steeplechase was a turn-of-the-century consumer disorderly version of the every- and leisure economy. In an day world that operated era when the nation’s produc- according to its own antic rules, tive technologies and exploding and it seemed dingy and industrial capacity flooded unspectacular in comparison markets with new things to with Luna Park, an architec- buy, Thompson and others like turally unified and exotic garden him retooled the machines to of enchantment. Although manufacture and sell the built out of flimsy and inex- most sought-after items of all: pensive plaster, it appeared pleasure and play. His ventures extravagantly luxurious and were just one dimension of a Left: “” at Luna Park, museum, and carnival midway. monumental––a vision of what national revolution in urban c. 1920. Three years after it There was a dance hall, the new twentieth century commercial amusements that opened, Luna Park counted five Wormwood’s Monkey Theater could or should be. As a catered to the rapidly expand- million visitors. Many waited (featuring variety acts by popular writer of the time ing middle class. Thompson’s in line for over an hour for rides animals), an outdoor circus, observed, Luna Park seemed publicist called this new that lasted two minutes. Venetian canals, and a nursery “a world removed—shut amusement economy “the Right: There were no right of premature babies warmed away from the sordid clatter billion-dollar smile,” and angles or rectilinear edges in in glass-enclosed incubators and turmoil of the streets.” declared that “it is spread Thompson’s Luna Park archi- and overseen by licensed nurses Everywhere there “was life— to-day from to New tecture because they reminded and doctors. For another fee, a pageant of happy people; York, from Bangor to the him of church sermons. patrons could take “A Trip to and everywhere was color—a Gulf.” It was true: American the Moon” or to “20,000 wide harmony of orange and cities large and small offered Leagues Under the Sea to the white and gold.” It was billed low-priced theaters and North Pole,” or watch a as “The Biggest Playground vaudeville houses, opera spectacle called “War of the on Earth,” and its existence companies, dance halls, Worlds.” both asked and answered the restaurants, amusement parks, question, Shouldn’t life always ballparks, nickelodeons, and A World Removed be this way, full of joy and picture palaces. There had been amusement color, without toil or pain or Showman Extraordinaire parks before, like Coney sacrifice? Born in in 1873 but Island’s own Steeplechase Fred Thompson certainly raised in Tennessee, Thompson Park, a bazaar of funhouse thought so; Luna Park was his had staked his initial claim pranks and entertainments design. A self-styled architect on the business of smiles by that gave people license to shed and visionary, Thompson was their workaday composure. one of the builders of America’s

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building shows for the Luna Park’s fantastic buildings burst into view, lit alists were focused on domes- amusement midways of the tic markets, Luna Park, with era’s great world’s . Moody, by more than 200,000 small incandescent bulbs. its vision of a magical world, quixotic, given to alcoholic was perhaps the nation’s binges, he was an outsized most dazzling and desired figure even for his day. The Sensational Attendance million in 1906, a number cultural export. spectacle of his failures would But by 1912, Fred Thompson had struck gold equal to half of New York eventually overwhelm the Thompson was financially with this idea at Buffalo’s 1901 State’s population, and in 1909 wonder of his successes. But bankrupt and physically br Pan-American International Coney Island logged twenty oken, for a decade, with the debut Exposition. His fantasy twenty- million visitors. Indeed, the undone by extravagance of Luna Park (and later his minute “Trip to the Moon” island had gotten so crowded and alcoholism. Luna itself mammoth New York Hippo - was the sensation of the fair, that the ordinarily grave New passed into new hands, and drome in Manhattan, the convincingly executed with York Times quipped that year, Thompson’s death in 1919 largest theater in the world at theatrical tricks and illusions. “[w]ho ever goes nowadays coincided with the expiration the time), Thompson reigned After a lecture on the “great except everybody?” of the Luna Park phase as one of the early twentieth secret of anti-gravitation and both of Coney Island and of Dreamlands and century’s premier showmen. aërial flight,” passengers amusement parks in general. Thompson explained that boarded a cigar-shaped winged Wonderlands In 1920, the five-cent subway Luna Park was a playground vessel and soared to the “Everybody” included came to Coney Island, and dreamed up by a man who moon, where the Lilliputian entrepreneurs from across the the summertime crowds, cared little about making a natives treated them to bites nation and around the world most of them from the city’s lot of money: what he really of green cheese and a dance who hustled to duplicate immigrant-based working- wanted was to have fun. performance by shapely Luna Park’s success. It’s not class neighborhoods, swelled And Luna was a place where moon maidens. The following hard to see why: several again. Yet even though new grown-ups could forget their summer Thompson, now million people, multiplied by landmarks like the Cyclone responsibilities––including the partnered with Skip Dundy, a dime or any smaller coin, dominated the kids. Having “too much work reopened “Trip” at Coney amounted by definition to a skyline, by the 1940s the vast and too little play,” adults Island’s , bonanza. In the fall of 1903, numbers of visitors—forty-six suffered from what Thompson where it was a hit again. In an alliance of businessmen million in 1943 alone—came called “tuberculosis of the for the surf and beaches, not 1903 they made it the center- and politicians had already heart,” for which Luna was the parks. At Coney Island and piece of Luna Park, where it broken ground at Coney the antidote, an oasis of elsewhere, amusement parks continued to make money Island for Dreamland, which make-believe where “play was were dropping their prices over the next decade. Since promised to be bigger and everything” and “responsibility and retooling their attractions then, no major amusement better than Luna in every way. had never been dreamed of.” to appeal to children and park has operated without a It was bigger, but never as He prohibited right angles families, while middle-class similar attraction: anyone who popular as its rival. By 1910, and rectilinear edges in his Americans turned more and embarked on Disneyland’s the American urban landscape architecture because they more to movies and automo 1955 “Rocket to the Moon,” glimmered with hundreds of - reminded him of church or who has joined E.T. on his amusement parks–– Dream- biles for escape and diversion. sermons, fashioning instead lands, White Cities, Electric bicycle at Universal Studios’ The Good Life Lives On “Oriental” cities of sinuous Parks, Sans Soucis, Wonder- Orlando Theme Park, has Still, anyone who has visited curves that would make people lands, Fairylands, Playlands–– experienced the same thrilling the capitals of the Mickey “laugh, enjoy themselves, nineteen of which were illusion of anti-gravitational Mouse empire in the years and...spend money while named for the Coney Island flight. since World War II can recog- being amused.” At Luna Park, original. Luna Parks also arose Luna Park’s turnstiles nize the promise of a return a man got to be a kid again. in , , , suggested Thompson was to childhood as an essential , and . At a on to something. The park selling point of the Disney time when American industri- counted an attendance of five theme parks and movies.

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century American theater. The clipping files on Luna Park, Fred Thompson, the New York Hippodrome, and Thompson’s many theatrical productions, while fragile from age and handling, are the starting point for investi- gation of his life and career. Coney Island has attracted much scholarly attention since the 1970s. Images can be found in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York, the New-York Historical Society, the Brooklyn Luna Park gave many middle- “There’s a place where magic L UNA PARK Historical Society, and the class New Yorkers their first lives,” Disney’s current ad In the early twentieth century, glimpse of an elephant. They Library of Congress. John campaign assures us, remind- Luna Park and Fred Thompson could even ride one. Kasson’s Amusing the Millions ing us by default of the were sensations around the (1978) is the best-known un-magical circumstances of world, as well as in virtually historical account, but Michael our everyday lives. All ages every sector of American Immerso’s Coney Island: The are urged to have fun together culture. Genteel publications People’s Playground (2002) is at the various Disney destina- like Theatre, Metropolitan, the best comprehensive history tions, which include not only The Delineator, Century, and of the resort from the late The Independent explored the 1840s to the present. subjects, but detailed and Undergoing a revival of sorts Luna Park’s existence both asked and answered flattering examinations can today, Coney Island is still also be found in such maga- the question, Shouldn’t life always be this way, full worth a visit. If you cannot go zines as Scientific American; there in person, the Coney of joy and color, without toil or pain or sacrifice? in technical and trade journals Island U.S.A. website on engineering, electrical (www.coneyisland.com) will lighting, retailing, and toy confirm that Coney is still the vast American sites but manufacturing; in major alive and well. also mini-cities in , , newspapers; and in glossy Finally, to get an idea of and, soon, . It publications devoted to show Luna Park playgrounds seems the vision of the Good business. The best places for around the world, type into Life has changed little since the finding such publications are Google the phrase “luna park” turn of the twentieth century, the older urban public libraries, (www.google.com/advanced_ when Luna Park existed as the best of which is the New search). Even if you specify a haven “for grown-ups and York Public Library for the only websites written in Peter Pans who will never Performing Arts, particularly Croatian, you will still get grow up.” It’s just that now its theater collection. The 130 hits. the kids can come along. ■ library also has a rich collection of newspaper clippings on the history of early twentieth-

NEW YORK archives • SUMMER 2003