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What Is Coney Island Amusement Park?

Britt Archer
Britt Archer

The Coney Island Amusement Park was the first amusement park of any significant size, and it became an entertainment empire for the masses, working class and wealthy alike, by the early 1900s. Known as the “nickel empire” for the cost of a subway ride to the seaside park in Brooklyn, it eventually came to offer family-style amusements, food and lodging. For decades the beach site had been the realm of the well-to-do class, with grand hotels and a shell road for access. The subway changed the landscape as well as the type of amusement park patrons who could afford the trip in 1920.

Transportation advances made a large impact on the growth and changing face of the Coney Island Amusement Park. What started as a seaside resort for the wealthy, accessible by carriage in the 1800s, eventually welcomed the middle class and then those who scrimped to afford a nickel subway ride. About 100,000 people went to the Coney Island Amusement Park on summer days at the turn of the 20th century, when Sundays were a day of leisure for the working class, and that number increased to 500,000 a day over the following two decades. The subway doubled the number of visitors after 1920 to a million.

Coney Island Amusement Park features 50 attractions, including rides.
Coney Island Amusement Park features 50 attractions, including rides.

At one time there were three parks at Coney Island: Luna Park, Steeplechase Park and Dreamland. Its famous roller coasters included the Thunderbolt and the Cyclone. The park also had more than a dozen carousels and, beginning in the mid-1950s, the Ferris wheel that was called the Wonder Wheel and the Spook-a-Rama, a spooky ride in an open car that rolled on tracks past dark and scary scenes. Today the amusement park has about 50 attractions, including rides. There is also a Coney Island Museum.

Coney Island includes some of the most famous roller coasters in the world.
Coney Island includes some of the most famous roller coasters in the world.

Subway riders in the 1920s couldn’t afford all the games and rides offered by the Coney Island Amusement Park, such as the 25-cent gallery where visitors could shoot at targets, or the many rides, some of which charged 15 cents. In 1923 many privately held beaches were made public, and people came in droves to enjoy the sand and ocean on hot summer days, packing their own food and drinks for lack of a dime to buy a hot dog, and wearing their bathing outfits under their street clothes to avoid having to pay 50 cents for a changing room. Despite economic hardship, the Coney Island Amusement Park, the nickel empire, gave the masses a place to have fun.

Coney Island is a former island, now a peninsula, in the south of Brooklyn, New York City.
Coney Island is a former island, now a peninsula, in the south of Brooklyn, New York City.

The boardwalk was erected in 1923, and the beach was made larger with the addition of 2.5 million square feet (232,257.6 square meters) of sand. Lifeguards paid by New York City were not employed until the boardwalk was constructed. Before that time, each bathhouse employed its own lifeguards. The advent of publicly employed lifeguards improved safety, with drownings decreasing from more than four dozen annually to about six.

Discussion Comments

Animandel

My friend and I were in New York touring all the sites and doing all the things tourists do in New York City. I'm not bothered by crowds, but we found that all the congestion made getting around a lot tougher, especially during the week.

We thought Sunday for sure would be a slower day and we would be able to move about the city using the trains and there would be fewer people to contend with.

Unfortunately, we managed to get on the trains in the middle of the Coney Island rush. It was unbelievable, and we had no idea why our perfect plan had backfired until someone told us that the mobs of people were normal on Sundays during the summer because people were going and coming from Coney Island.

Drentel

My dad was a firm believer in hard work five days a week and then even harder work on Saturday so he could rest on Sundays and not worry that he should be doing something he hadn't completed during the week.

My mother always told him he should take more time off. She would say, even the workers at Coney Island get Mondays off. At the time I had no idea exactly what that meant because we lived nowhere near NY and I didn't know Coney Island from the Grand Canyon.

I later learned that the owner of the amusement park gave workers Mondays off because they had to work on Saturdays and he felt everyone should have a two-day weekend.

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    • Coney Island Amusement Park features 50 attractions, including rides.
      By: fotografiche.eu
      Coney Island Amusement Park features 50 attractions, including rides.
    • Coney Island includes some of the most famous roller coasters in the world.
      By: Bastos
      Coney Island includes some of the most famous roller coasters in the world.
    • Coney Island is a former island, now a peninsula, in the south of Brooklyn, New York City.
      By: cesar
      Coney Island is a former island, now a peninsula, in the south of Brooklyn, New York City.