Coney Island

Coney Island

1 . Introduction

Once a desolate stretch of sand dunes , Coney Island became in the second half of the nineteenth century a seaside resort for New York 's expanding middle class . The extension of streetcar and railroad lines to Coney Island granted accessibility to growing numbers of pleasure seekers who sought a day 's escape from the city . This island , once separated from the mainland , is part of Brooklyn . Originally , the island was covered with sand dunes , and wild rabbits were abundant , thence the name Coney Island . Famous for bathing

beaches , amusement parks , and its Boardwalk in the nineteenth century this was a fashionable resort with large summer hotels served by many steamboats and railroads (Kasson 1978 Coney Island offers a wonderful case study not only because of its long existence as such a place , but also because it was , for a few decades the primary proving ground for new forms of mechanical amusements designed to attract a large middle-class audience . The principal amusement parks were Luna Park , Dreamland Park , and Steeplechase Park

2 . HYPERLINK "http /history .amusement-parks .com /coneyparkspages .htm The Amusements of Coney Island

Coney Island opened in 1895 and its amusement parks flourished in the years before World War I . Like the Midways of the World 's Fairs (which had been the inspiration for Coney 's designers , Coney Island offered an array of fantasy environments and entertainments . The architecture of its three amusement parks was wildly eclectic : minarets , towers , domes stucco , gilding , paint , over-decoration , jumble and garishness and at night , Coney Island was dazzling : a fairyland of electric lights . At the 1893 Columbian Exposition at Chicago , the Midway amusement section offered an invigorating contrast to the monumental , neoclassical dignified and correct White City at the center of the Exposition (Kasson 1978 . Similarly , Coney Island offered an exhilarating antidote to nearby New York City . During the summer months , millions of urban workers went to Coney Island , where a carnival atmosphere prevailed , and the normal structures and rules governing social behavior were temporarily suspended . Like the circus , Coney Island functioned as an antidote and even a protest to the moralism and ideology of the Progressive Era . Coney Island 's spectacularly staged program provided its working-class audiences a spectacle and a moral : after the eruption of Vesuvius , it is the Christians of Pompeii who escape and are triumphant , the wealthy and decadent Romans who perish . So this vision of an urban Armageddon offered spectators a double pleasure : a voyeuristic enjoyment of lavish displays of luxury and extravagance set in doomed Pompeii and the moral pleasure of witnessing the ultimate triumph of justice . In The Last Days of Pompeii , the unbearable conditions of metropolitan life were transformed into melodramatic and fiery entertainment . Understood to be an outlet for the built-up human steam of the urban world proper , Manhattan , Coney Island functioned as a staging ground for all manner of transcendental aspirations : moon travel and undersea adventures , jet-propelled flight and various Jules-Verne-like combinations thereof . Before the city itself could offer many...