Download or read book Lost Amusement Parks of New York City written by Barbara Gottlock and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical tour of fun and frolic in the five boroughs—including photos from the good old days. Coney Island is an iconic symbol of turn-of-the-century New York—but many other amusement parks have thrilled the residents of the five boroughs. Strategically placed at the end of trolley lines, railways, public beaches, and waterways, these playgrounds for the rich and poor alike first appeared in 1767. From humble beginnings, they developed into huge sites like Fort George, Manhattan’s massive amusement complex. Each park was influenced by the culture and eclectic tastes of its owners and patrons—from the wooden coasters at Staten Island’s Midland Beach to beer gardens on Queens’ North Beach and fireworks blasting from the Bronx’s Starlight Park. As real estate became more valuable, these parks disappeared. With this historical tour, you can rediscover the thrills of the past from the lost amusement parks of New York City.
Download or read book Coney Island s Wonder Wheel Park written by Charles Denson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-03 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The venerable Wonder Wheel, Coney Island's oldest and greatest attraction, has dominated the Coney Island skyline for more than a century. Towering over an ephemeral amusement zone long plagued by fires, floods, and ill-conceived urban renewal schemes, the magnificent steel machine has proved to be the ultimate survivor. The ride boasts impressive statistics. A combination of roller coaster and Ferris wheel, the 150-foot-tall structure weighs 200 tons, has 16 swinging cars and 8 stationary cars, and can carry 144 riders. More than 40 million passengers have taken a ride on the wheel since it was built in 1920, and during that time, it has maintained a perfect safety record. The ride is also a monument to immigrant initiative. Charles Hermann, the ride's designer, was Romanian; the original owner, Herman Garms, was German; and Denos Vourderis, who purchased and lovingly restored the aging landmark in 1983, was Greek. An official New York City landmark, the Wonder Wheel is now owned and operated by three generations of the Vourderis family as the centerpiece of their Deno's Wonder Wheel Park. The enduring saga of this iconic ride, and the family that saved it, provide a captivating chapter of Coney Island's history.
Download or read book Coney Island and Astroland written by Charles Denson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coney Island is a unique New York City neighborhood and a place of exciting innovation, where the roller coaster and the hot dog were introduced to the world, the glow of a million bare lightbulbs at Luna Park dazzled early visitors, and rocket rides at Astroland fueled intergalactic fantasies. Coney Island served as the pressure valve for New York, drawing millions to its famous beach on sweltering weekends. Astroland Park, created at the dawn of the space age, was the vision of Dewey and Jerome Albert. They transformed the 3-acre Feltman's Restaurant property, one of Coney Island's oldest attractions, into a futuristic amusement park that would anchor the amusement zone for the next half century. The park's ambitious opening in 1962 mirrored the wide-eyed optimism of the early 1960s and helped Coney Island survive the closure of the venerable Steeplechase Park.
Download or read book Coney Island written by Charles Denson and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Denson gives us an insider's look at one of New York's best-known neighborhoods, weaving together memories of his childhood adventures with colorful stories of the area's past and interviews with local personalities, all brought to life by hundreds of photographs, detailed maps, and authentic memorabilia.
Download or read book Coney Island Baby written by Larry Racioppo and published by . This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Brooklyn Gang written by Bruce Davidson and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reproductions and layout are superb, rich and textured, and the accompanying text is illuminating ...
Download or read book The Kid of Coney Island written by Woody Register and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-10-18 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A generation before Walt Disney, Fred Thompson was the "boy-wonder" of American popular amusements. At the turn of the 20th century, Thompson's entrepreneurial drive made him into an entertainment mogul who helped to define the popular culture of his day. In this lively biography, Woody Register tells Thompson's remarkable story and examines the transformation of commerce and entertainment as American society moved into an era of mass marketing and large-scale corporate enterprise. Getting his start as a promoter of carnival shows at world's fairs, Thompson was one of the principal developers of Coney Island, where he created the majestic Luna Park. Register traces Thompson's career as he built the mammoth Hippodrome Theater in Manhattan, where he mounted many productions noted for their spectacular--and spectacularly costly--staging effects. Register shows how Thompson's fantasies appealed to the growing legions of Americans who found themselves in a world that seemed increasingly "businesslike" and profit oriented. He illustrates how Thompson aggressively marketed to adult consumers a world of make-believe and childlike play, carefully crafting his own public image as "the boy who never grew up." Colorful, well-written, and insightful, The Kid of Coney Island brings to life a kaleidoscopic era in New York history as well as one of its most striking characters.
Download or read book Coney Island written by Robin Jaffee Frank and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, and held there January 31-May 31, 2015; at the San Diego Museum of Art, Calif., July 11-October 13, 2015; at the Brooklyn Museum, N.Y., November 20, 2015-March 13, 2016; and at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Tex., May 11-September 11, 2016.
Download or read book Roosevelt Island written by Judith Berdy and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roosevelt Island captures the fascinating and sometimes curious history of an island located halfway between Manhattan and Queens in the East River. In 1824, the city of New York purchased Blackwell's Island, later Welfare Island, as a site for its lunatic asylum, penitentiary, workhouses, and almshouses. In the years that followed, the island was a temporary home for several of New York City's famous and infamous. William Marcy Tweed, better known as "Boss Tweed," was imprisoned at the penitentiary in the 1870s. Mae West was incarcerated in 1927 at the Workhouse for Women after her appearance in a play called Sex. After many institutions were closed or relocated, Welfare Island was virtually ignored until 1973, when it was reborn as Roosevelt Island, which is now a model planned community and thriving home to almost ten thousand people.
Download or read book Coney Island Christmas written by Donald Margulies, based on the story "The Loudest Voice" by Grace Paley and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies weaves together nostalgia, music and merriment in this new seasonal classic. A holiday show for people of all ages and all faiths, CONEY ISLAND CHRISTMAS introduces us to Shirley Abramowitz, a young Jewish girl who (much to her immigrant parents' exasperation) is cast as Jesus in the school's Christmas pageant. As Shirley, now much older, recounts the memorable story to her great-granddaughter, the play captures a timeless and universal tale of what it means to be an American during the holidays.
Download or read book Amusing the Million written by John F. Kasson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coney Island: the name still resonates with a sense of racy Brooklyn excitement, the echo of beach-front popular entertainment before World War I. Amusing the Million examines the historical context in which Coney Island made its reputation as an amusement park and shows how America's changing social and economic conditions formed the basis of a new mass culture. Exploring it afresh in this way, John Kasson shows Coney Island no longer as the object of nostalgia but as a harbinger of modernity--and the many photographs, lithographs, engravings, and other reproductions with which he amplifies his text support this lively thesis.
Download or read book The Lost Tribe of Coney Island written by Claire Prentice and published by New Harvest. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the story of a group of people from the Philippines who were transported to Coney Island in 1905 to be portrayed as “headhunting, dog-eating savages” in a Luna Park freak show.
Download or read book Roller Coaster Kids Tales of 1960 s Coney Island written by Gary Heiden and published by . This book was released on 2017-12 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Roller Coaster Kids; Tales of 1960's Coney Island" is a Brooklyn artist's coming of age memoir that chronicles the author's many wild experiences while growing up in the unique Brooklyn, New York neighborhood of Coney Island during the tumultuous decade of the 1960's. One outrageous Coney little rascal story follows another, from almost being emasculated in a friendly chicken fight, to how his 1st. grade classmate's friendship informed his views about the ongoing civil rights movement, to almost being kidnapped by a strange, very lazy old lady, to exploring an old Sea Gate mansion about to be demolished by a giant bulldozer. "Roller Coaster Kids, Tales of 1960's" reads like a Brooklyn, New York Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn adventure. By 1960, only one grand amusement park remained in Coney Island, George C. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park. Who better to tell this classic Brooklyn, Coney Island story than the author, who is very likely the last little rascal to go on a ride in the old Steeplechase Park before it was demolished. If you love Brooklyn, New York or just love stories about growing up in America, or you have a connection to the historic decade of the 1960's, and you enjoy zany, crazy wild rides.... then this book is for you. It's all about Brooklyn, the sights and smells, even the beloved rooftop pigeon coops and the whirring acrobatic flocks taking to the sky above Coney Island. FORGETTABOUTIT!
Download or read book Samantha at Coney Island and a Thousand Other Islands written by Marietta Holley and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Amusement Parks of New York written by Jim Futrell and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive guide profiles 16 major amusement parks in the Empire State and offers information on smaller parks as well. Offers complete information on rides and attractions, a history of each park, and best times to go. Features vintage photographs and postcards scenes.
Download or read book You Are Here NYC written by Katharine Harmon and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maps are magical. Every graphic, like every story, has a point of view, and New York is rife with mapmaking possibilities, thick with mythology, and glutted with history. You Are Here: NYC assembles some two hundred maps charting every inch and facet of the five boroughs, depicting New Yorks of past and present, and a city that never was. "A Nightclub Map of Harlem" traces a boozy night from the Radium and the Cotton Club to the Savoy and then the Lafayette; "Wonders of New York" pinpoints three hundred sites of interest, including the alleged location of Captain Kidd's buried treasure; the Ghostbusters subway map plots the route from Astral Projections Place to Stay Puft Street; and a rejected proposal of ornate topiaries illustrates a Central Park that might have been. This sequel to the best-selling You Are Here includes original essays by Bob Mankoff, Maria Popova, Sarah Boxer, and Rebecca Cooper, among others.
Download or read book The Amusement Park written by Stephen M. Silverman and published by Black Dog & Leventhal. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 764 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience the electrifying, never-before-told true story of amusement parks, from the middle ages to present day, and meet the colorful (and sometimes criminal) characters who are responsible for their enchanting charms. Step right up! The Amusement Park is a rich, anecdotal history that begins nine centuries ago with the "pleasure gardens" of Europe and England and ends with the most elaborate modern parks in the world. It's a history told largely through the stories of the colorful, sometimes hedonistic characters who built them, including: Showmen like Joseph and Nicholas Schenck and Marcus Loew Railroad barons Andrew Mellon and Henry E. Huntington The men who ultimately destroyed the parks, including Robert Moses and Fred Trump Gifted artisans and craft-people who brought the parks to life An amazing cast of supporting players, from Al Capone to Annie Oakley And, of course, this is a full-throttle celebration of the rides, those marvels of engineering and heart-stopping thrills from an author, Stephen Silverman, whose life-long passion for his subject shines through. The parks and fairs featured include the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Coney Island, Steeplechase Park, Dreamland, Euclid Beach Park, Cedar Point, Palisades Park, Ferrari World, Dollywood, Sea World, Six Flags Great Adventure, Universal Studios, Disney World and Disneyland, and many more.
