The House of Too Much Trouble |
Thoughts and selections from the Coney Island Museum |
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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
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Page from Jimmy Onorato’s diaries.
One of the most interesting treasures we have in the Coney Island Museum is the Jimmy Onorato Diaries. Jimmy Onorato was the General Manager for Steeplechase Park beginning in 1928, and kept extremely detailed notes on the daily operations and maintenance of the many rides, concessions and attractions.
While reading the often mundane entries in the diaries, it is obvious that many precautions were taken to avoid injuries on the rides (shown above.) Despite the constant repairs and inspections, accidents did still occasionally happen. This is mostly due to the flat-out dangerous nature of some of the rides and attractions.
Barrel of Love, Steeplechase Park
Barrel of Love, Steeplechase Park, 1903 (courtesy of www.authentichistory.com)
Some of the more dangerous rides included the Barrel of Love (aka the Barrel of Fun,) where riders had to make their way through a rotating tube, the Human Roulette Wheel, where people piled in the middle of a disc that would then spin, throwing them to the sides of the enclosure and a moving staircase, intended to make people fall.
Human Pool Table, Steeplechase Park
Human Roulette Wheel, Steeplechase Park (courtesy of www.authentichistory.com)
These attractions would never exist today, when lawsuits are prevalent, and amusement park owners are worried about injury and liability. One famous injury in Steeplechase in 1928 resulted in a court ruling that is still relevant today.
A young man named Murphy went to Steeplechase with a number of his friends in 1928. As they waited to get onto an attraction called “The Flopper,” he watched many people get onto it before him. The Flopper was basically a giant conveyer belt that once a rider got on would run and then abruptly stop, causing riders to go flying.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Murphy fell on the Flopper and fractured his kneecap. He tried to sue Steeplechase Park for his injuries in Murphy v Steeplechase Amusement Co. The lawsuit failed on account of the fact that he knew what was going to happen when he went on the ride. He knew that it was intended to make riders fall down and he still made the decision to get on the ride. The ruling was that ”the timorous may stay at home.”(!)
This case is still cited in lawsuits involving injuries, where professional athletes try to sue their teams. The idea is that they understand the risk involved, and willingly take that risk. The same is cited for spectators who get injured by baseballs at baseball games.
I love that Coney Island history is full of surprises like this, and that something like the dangerous rides in the 1920s would have an impact on something as serious as injury lawsuits today.
- Katie Karkheck
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Cover of The Ilustrated American, October 16, 1896
Coney Island has since its beginnings been plagued by fire. Recent visitors to the Coney Island Museum will know that Dreamland Park burned to the ground in 1911. This story has been elaborately reconstructed in the museum’s Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire. Far fewer people know that Dreamland’s burning was not the first fire disaster in Coney Island history, and sadly, it was not its last.
Firefighters working to extinguish the Dreamland Fire of 1911.
The great irony of the fires in Coney Island is that there were fire fighting spectacles in both Dreamland and Luna Park (both of which burned down,) and Liliputia, the midget village, had its own fire department. Fire was something to be gawked at, and used to entertain the masses.
The audience view of Fighting the Flames, Dreamland
Nineteenth Century business owners in Coney Island learned to be resilient to fire. They learned to build right on top of the ashes as quickly as possible in order to have successful seasons.
Click here (PDF) to learn more about the early history of Coney Island fire, including the fire that destroyed the notorious Elephant Colossus.
-Katie Karkheck
As part of our ongoing collection management efforts, Coney Island USA has been digitizing back issues of the Coney-isle-o-phile, a quarterly newsletter produced in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
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This is a graphic from the actual ticket to the Shooting the Rapids ride, a favorite of pre-1904 Coney Island. The ride was demolished and the rapids became the central lagoon of Dreamland Amusement Park, which was built on the same site.
This image was printed in the Winter 1993-1994 Coney Isle-o-phile, a quarterly periodical that Coney Island USA printed from 1993-2008.
-Eve Peyser-Sappol
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Stauch’s Baths Postcard, 1907
I always wondered what this image was all about. It is only one of several baffling images in our postcard collection, but until recently, I never understood its significance. While researching the Coney Island Mardi Gras Parade for last week’s post, I came across many mentions of the “ticklers” and confetti at the parade.
New York Times, September 19, 1906 - the full article can be found here.
It turns out that these ticklers were the weird feather-duster-like objects in the postcard. Along with confetti, they were very popular among the crowds, but caused quite a few problems at the Mardi Gras Parade.
Originally used to annoy fellow parade-goers, the Mardi Gras Parade, on September 23, 1906, the ticklers were involved in much more mischief. People were beaten by them, “women were insulted,” and fights broke out. People were also throwing confetti mixed with pebbles and tin in the faces of other spectators. Fighting escalated and many were arrested. Things got so out of hand, that the sale of ticklers and confetti had to be stopped.
New York Times, September 26, 1906 - the full article can be found here.
The ticklers and confetti became such a nuisance and health hazard that by 1926, all ticklers and all reused confetti was banned, with the threat of jail to anyone caught with either.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 13, 1926 - see full article here.
After this weekend’s upcoming Mermaid Parade, I hope to find out even more strange little details about some of our more baffling images.
-Katie Karkheck
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Coney Island USA’s 30th annual Mermaid Parade is getting closer and closer. Despite its fame, most people don’t know that parades of this type are nothing new to Coney Island.
Coney Island Mardi Gras Parade Bathing Beauties, 1952
From 1903 until 1953 Coney Island celebrated its annual Mardi Gras Parade after Labor Day, (it was never during actual Mardi Gras). It was created as a fundraiser for the Coney Island Rescue Mission for wayward girls. It evolved into a colorful spectacle of floats, people in costumes, floats, and city officials, complete with its own king and queen.
International Police Conference Mardi Gras Badge
The Coney Island Museum has many objects, photographs and artifacts from the Coney Island Mardi Gras Parade. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to highlight a few.
Mardi Gras Ribbon
Our annual Mermaid Parade pays homage to this aspect of Coney Island history and is guaranteed to be a great time on June 23rd.
-Katie Karkheck
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Notes The Eden Musee
One of the things I love about working with the collection at the Coney Island Museum is its focus. Sometimes we will come across items in our collection that despite their size offer complete information on what existed in this neighborhood many years ago. Our collection is suggestive of Coney Island’s History in its bits and pieces.
I really love when researchers visit our collection, because it gives me an opportunity to really dig into our collection and get an even deeper understanding of what these objects represent.
Recently, we were visited by a couple of scholars who are working on an upcoming exhibition of artistic depictions of Coney Island from the 19th century until today. They were looking to see exactly what was on display at the Eden Musee when it moved to Coney Island from Manhattan. Luckily for them, we have the souvenir program that was published when the Eden Musee came to Coney Island. It is one of our many objects that offers a real window into what was here long ago.
The Eden Musee originally opened on 23rd Street in Manhattan in 1883. At that time, the lavishly decorated museum featured much more than wax figures. It was intended to be a highly cultural and educational center. It had its own gallery and hosted frequent concerts by the Eden Musee Orchestra. Among its wax tableaus were the recreations of major historical events, and the likenesses of important figures like Cleopatra and Napoleon.
In 1915, Samuel Gumpertz, showman and proprietor of Coney Island’s Dreamland, bought many of the wax figures and tableaus at auction, when the Eden Musee closed its doors. Gumpertz promptly reopened the Eden Musee, on Surf Avenue, in Coney Island. The Coney Island version of the Eden Musee was much more sensational, doing away with the concerts and art exhibitions and focusing on the Chamber of Horrors and the likenesses of famous people and recreations of events.
The Eden Musee burned down in March 1928, destroying the wax works. Though it was a complete loss, it was not the end of wax museums in Coney Island. In 1926, Lillie Santangelo and her husband opened the World in Wax Musee. It followed the same tradition of displaying wax figures of famous people and an elaborate Chamber of Horrors. It remained open until 1984. The tradition of wax museums have continued in tourist trap towns throughout the country and are always a treat to visit.-Katie Karkheck
