The House of Too Much Trouble

Many people think of light and electricity when they think of old Coney Island.  Thomas Edison famously electrocuted Topsy the Elephant at Coney Island, in 1903,  during his AC vs DC current rivalry with George Westinghouse.  (A terrible sight, which can be viewed through the Mutoscope at the Coney Island Museum).  The illumination of Coney Island at night around the turn of the century, was a notable sight.  The lights were so bright that they could be seen 4 miles out to sea.  I have had several Brooklyn-born friends tell me their parents used to exclaim “turn off the lights! It looks like Luna Park in here!”  Visitors would come from all over to see the “The Electric Eden.”

A somewhat more surprising electric attraction that predated all three major parks at Coney Island was the practice of “Electric Bathing.”  The New York Times article (below) claims that Coney Island was first illuminated in 1878 (though by the pre-incandescent arc lamps), the very same year that Joseph Swan created the first incandescent light bulb, and Thomas Edison founded the Edison Electric Company.  Lights were placed high on poles on the beach, in the water and on piers to light the water, and allow visitors to continue their fun into the night.  

New York Times, September 7, 1924

In an article entitled “The Progress of the Electric Light,” dated August 8, 1880, the New York Times refers to electric light as the only thing that will appease “those lunatics that persist in bathing after nightfall.” This seems particularly dangerous, with modesty customs dictating that bathers wear full-length bathing costumes, the limited light these lamps offered, and the fact that water and electricity pose a serious electrocution hazard. 

Scribner’s Monthly, July 1880

The fact that Coney Island’s illumination and the very popular electric bathing predated even the first Edison Electric power plant in New York City, and the adoption of the incandescent lightbulb, to me, is nothing short of astonishing.  I can only imagine the wonder of people arriving at Coney Island for the first time and witnessing the glow of the lights.  

When most people think of old roller coasters, they usually think of something that looks like the above image - twisting and full of drops and peaks that give riders that thrilling stomach-in-throat feeling.  (The coaster above was the Tornado.)  It is no surprise that Coney Island had a large hand in the development and evolution of the roller coaster, but I didn’t know that there was a precursor to these iconic gravity-fueled rides practically in my back yard!

Image via Poor William’s Almanack

L.A. Thompson’s Scenic Railway was built in Coney Island in 1884 and was powered by gravity.  Riders would climb into the seats, and ride down an incline up to another hill, where they would turn around and return to the beginning.  This model lead to roller coasters of all kinds, including the Flip-Flap Railway (1895) of Sea Lion Park, and the Loop-the-Loop (1901). 

Loop-the-Loop, circa 1903 (image via)

While working with the local history collection at the public library (the non-Coney Island part of my life), I came across mention of the Dunderburg Spiral Railway.  This sounded vaguely roller coaster related!  After looking into it, I discovered that anyone visiting the Hudson Valley can visit the remnants of an early roller coaster-related railroad that significantly predated L.A. Thompson’s Coney Island railways!  

Modern sketched map of the Dunderberg Spiral Railway (image via)

The Dunderberg Spiral Railway was preceeded by the Mauch Chunk Railway of Jim Thorpe, PA, which was built originally for mine use in the 1870s.  The Mauch Chunk became a popular tourist attraction.  In 1889 the Dunderberg Spiral Railway Corporation intended to build a hotel at the top of Dunderberg Mountain.  Visitors accessed the hotel by steam railway, and would leave by way of the spiral railway.  Looping down the mountain, through tunnels and offering views of the hudson valley, the gravity-only powered spiral railway was to cover about 12 miles and reach a speed of 50-60 miles per hour.

Mauch Chunk Railway (image via)

Unfortunately, the Dunderberg Spiral Railway was never completed.  Around 1891, the project ran out of money and construction stopped completely.  Interested hikers can visit the site and find handmade tunnels, cleared paths and remnants of the early roller coaster intended to be hotel transportation.  

One of the tunnels from the remnants of the spiral railway (image via)

I plan to take a hike once it gets warmer.  For more information about the trails, visit the New York New Jersey Trail Conference.

One of the many ways that Coney Island has left a long-lasting stamp in American popular culture is in song.  It has inspired songwriters for well over a century, and continues to do so.  More recent songs include at least three very different songs titled “Coney Island Baby,” by Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and The Excellents, “Coney Island” by Death Cab for Cutie, “Coney Island Shuffle,” by Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire and many many others.  

We have a fair number of leaflets of sheet music and old records of songs about Coney Island in the museum collection.  At the time I started working here, I had not heard any of them, and we had no means for playing the records.  The elaborate covers of the sheet music were especially interesting as art objects.  At the time, sheet music was promoted as “in the style of” or “as popularized by” various performers.

Probably the best known of these old songs is “Meet Me To-night in Dreamland,” written by  Beth Slater Whitson and Leo Friedman, and published in 1909.  It was performed by many, including a young Judy Garland in the 1949 movie In the Good Old Summertime. 

Here is a 1910 recording, by Henry Burr, of the same song, digitized from an Edison wax cylinder.  

Now, thanks to massive audio preservation projects, like the Internet Archive, and the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox, many historical recordings have been digitized and made available to the public.   While I understand the mechanics or early recording and playback, for me, it is still nothing short of magic to hear these early recordings.

Another less popular recording is “Meet Me Down At Luna Lena,” composed by Henry Frantzen.  Below is a 1905 recording by the Haydn Quartet, with Billy Murray as the lead vocalist.  To hear it, click here.  

It seems that many of the early songs written about Coney Island involved innocent, and not-so-innocent trysts at the beach and amusement parks.  To me, while hearing these songs, it is pretty easy to imagine people meeting up on the boardwalk during Coney Island’s heyday.  

I had the exciting opportunity last week to visit the Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts library to view a collection of Coney Island memorabilia, papers and drawings.  While, I ultimately did not find what I was looking for, I had an incredible time sorting  through boxes and boxes of notes and papers, often containing little snippets of information I hadn’t come across before.  While reading one of the letters, I saw a reference to “the parachute jumps in Russia.”  Taking mental note of it, I decided to dig a little bit into the history of our beloved Parachute Jump, and see if I could find out more about its origins.

The idea of the Parachute Jump was originally conceived by Stanley Switlik and George Palmer Putnam (Amelia Earhart’s husband), as a training tool for soldiers.  Switlik formed the Switlik Parachute Company, and with Mr. Palmer, built a 115 foot tower on his property in New Jersey, from which Amelia Earhart was the first jumper.  

New York Times, June 3, 1935

The original “Russian Parachute Jumps” I saw referenced in the archives, were precursors to Switlik’s structures, though they were made of wood, and were rather dangerous, as jumpers were known to collide with the towers.  Several of these towers were eventually built on military bases all over, including those in New Jersey and Georgia.  They offered new paratroopers safe training on the towers, before making actual parachute jumps from airplanes. 

image via

The existing Parachute Jump was built as an amusement attraction for the 1939 World’s Fair, and was originally sponsored by Life Savers Candy.  It was extremely popular among fair-goers.  

image via

New York Times, May 28, 1939

The structure was eventually purchased by George C. Tilyou to become an attraction at Steeplechase Park, where it remained in operation until 1968.  It has narrowly escaped demolition a handful of times.  Fred Trump wanted to demolish it to make room for condominiums, and it was failed to be bid upon in auction in 1971, and in 1977.  It received National Landmark status federally in 1980, and in 1989 by the city.  Thankfully, the “Eiffel Tower of Brooklyn” is safe and protected.  Now to get it up and running again…

George C. Tilyou’s Steeplechase Park, collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (image via)

Everyone who is at all familiar with Coney Island history is aware of its influence in so many facets of American culture - from film, to literature, to art.  I would like to occasionally highlight some of the important American artists that used Coney Island as inspiration.  The 1910s through the 1950s were an important period in the introduction of Modernism in American art, and are also often considered the larger heyday of Coney Island.  With the huge crowds, the diversity of the people, the (at times) vice-filled activities, and the large, beautiful amusement parks, it is no wonder it was such a frequent subject for artists of the time.  

image via

The artist that is probably the best known for his depictions of Coney Island beaches, amusements, burlesque shows, and rides is Reginald Marsh (1898-1954).  Born in Paris, and raised in New Jersey, Marsh studied at Yale, where he became the illustrator for the Yale newspaper.  He later studied at the Art Student’s League in New York, where he was taught by George Luks.  He used a variety of media, including oil, lithograph, drypoint etching, and egg tempera. He kept many sketchbooks during his summers spent in Coney Island.  Marsh rejected the modernists, and referred to himself as a Social Realist. 

What, to me is most remarkable was his ability to capture the energy of the people - the crowds, the movement and the interaction.  The paintings almost writhe with action!  

Coney Island 1936, Syracuse University Art Collection (image via)

image via

While Marsh’s painting above, was made several years after the above photograph, the effect of the crowd is the same.  It perfectly captured the spirit of the area.  I hope to revisit the work of other iconic artists and their depictions of Coney Island in future posts.  

Despite how long I have been researching Coney Island history and writing this blog, I am forever surprised at where my research takes me.  Rarely do I end up writing the post I intend to write, because in gathering information, I always come across something I never thought of, or knew about.  Those surprising little tidbits tend to become the topics of my posts, and I have to learn to begin my research with an open mind.  

I intended on investigating the imagery on a postcard in our collection depicting a revolving airship tower, that to me, looked like a fantasy illustration of an existing ride.  I did not find any information on the “Rotating Air Ship Tower, but upon further digging, I found out more about Coney Island’s connection to early flight.

I did come across the top image via Shorpy of the “Revels of Japan” Japanese Teahouse, with a sign advertising an Airship!  What was this?!  It turns out that in the gardens of the teahouse, was a parked airship available for visitors to view.  It was build in 1903 by Brazilian aviator and inventor, Alberto Santos-Dumont, and was named Airship #9, or “La Baladeuse.”  It was designed to be an easy way to travel, and Santos-Dumont was known to make personal visits with it.  

image via

Aviation was the craze at the time, with the Wright Brothers also making their first flight in 1903.  This fascination is reflected in many images in Coney Island souvenirs, with postcards and souvenir photographs of people posed inside fake airplanes and airships.  

The romanticism of air travel, at the time, seemed to fit in perfectly with the fantasy of Dreamland.

Puck Magazine, February 21, 1914 (image via)

As everyone knows, yesterday was New Year’s Day, and with that comes the annual Coney Island New Year’s Day swim.  It is organized every year by the Coney Island Polar Bear Club and has always raised money for charity.  It also brings luck and a good year to those that jump in every January 1st.  

While I knew that every year, hundreds and sometimes thousands come to Coney Island for New Year’s Day, what I didn’t know is that winter swimming has a very long history in Coney Island, and was extremely fashionable around the turn of the century.  

New York Times, January 8, 1908

The Coney Island Polar Bear Club is the longest-running winter swimming club in the United States.  It was founded in 1903 by Bernarr Macfadden, the self-titled “Father of Physical Culture,” who promoted winter swimming as a health-building activity.  

Bernarr Macfadden (photo via)

He began the magazine Physical Culture, in 1899, in which he published many of his ideas about good health and fitness.  Among them were the promotion of exercise, the drinking of milk, sleeping on hard surfaces, regular sex, and fasting.  He warned against the dangers of eating white bread, wearing corsets, drinking, smoking, taking medication and wearing glasses.  

The cold baths were supposed to promote vigor, strength, good circulation and better overall health, though today I think most do it for the fun of it.  

So, in the spirit of a freezing-cold New Year’s day plunge, I hope everyone has a happy, healthy, vigorous New Year.

For more information about Coney Island USA and our hurricane recovery efforts, please visit www.coneyisland.com.  

Ever since I started going to concerts, when I was 13 or 14, I have been a rather vigilant ticket stub collector.  While I have never been organized or motivated enough to make a concert ticket scrapbook, or anything like that, I do have many stubs for the many shows I have attended.  By going through them, I can instantly recall the goofy antics of one performer, the place where I was in my life, or the dance party that broke out despite the stifling heat in the venue.  

I lament the shift from physical, heavy paper tickets, to online printouts, because the printouts make terrible keepsakes.  As a museum worker, I get to handle the normally thrown out scraps of the past.  The scraps and ticket stubs from early Coney Island are infinitely more interesting than my stack of ticket stubs.  The truly beautiful dove, shown above, was the ticket stub for a theatrical attraction called the Deluge.  

from Coney Island: The People’s Playground a Souvenir Book, 1906

The Deluge was created by Amusement Entrepreneur, H.A. Bradwell, and opened in May 1906.  Bradwell was responsible for having created other popular attractions in Coney Island, like the Vengeance of Vesuvius, The Jonestown Flood, Feltman’s Ziz, and Dreamland’s Creation.  It seemed that he specialized in large-scale theatrical recreations of disasters or monumental events, though he advertised that he could build anything in the amusement industry.  

The Billboard, March 9, 1907

Located in the former Johnstown Flood building, The Deluge was one of a handful of biblical-themed attractions in Coney Island at the time.  It recreated the story of Noah and the Ark, beginning with actors carousing in a temple at finishing with the ark on top of Mount Ararat.  

from Coney Island: The People’s Playground a Souvenir Book, 1906

from Coney Island: The People’s Playground a Souvenir Book, 1906

It was quite a popular spectacle.  I like to think of Dreamland’s version of the large-scale, blockbuster, CGI disaster movies of their time, full of drama and doom.  The tickets are certainly more interesting!

-Katie Karkheck