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WD_311/ 2007
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 4 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 25.6 x 17.7 | | Size (mm): | 650 x 450 | | Catalog #: | WD_0311 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
Coney Island -
St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Anna Notaro
Coney Island, with its beach, amusement parks, and numerous other attractions, became emblematic of nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century urban condition while at the same time providing relief from the enormous risks of living in a huge metropolis. On Coney Island, both morals and taste could be transgressed. This was the place where the debate between official and popular culture was first rehearsed, a debate which would characterize the twentieth century in America.
Discovered just one day before Manhattan in 1609 by explorer Henry Hudson, Coney Island is a strip of sand at the mouth of New York's natural harbor. The Canarsie Indians, its original inhabitants, had named it "Place without Shadows." In 1654 the Indian Guilaouch, who claimed to be the owner of the peninsula, traded it for guns, gunpowder, and beads, similar to the more famous sale of Manhattan. The peninsula was known under many names, but none stuck until people called it Coney Island because of the presence of an extraordinary number of coneys, or rabbits.
In 1823 the first bridge which would connect Manhattan to the island was built, and Coney Island, with its natural attractions, immediately became the ideal beach resort for the ever-growing urban population of Manhattan. By the mid-nineteenth century large resort hotels had been built. Corrupt political boss John Y. McKane ruled the island, turning a blind eye to the gangsters, con men, gamblers, and prostitutes who congregated on the west end of the island. In 1865 the railroad finally allowed the metropolitan masses their weekend escape to Coney Island, and the number of visitors grew enormously, creating a great demand for entertainment and food. The hot dog was invented on Coney Island in the 1870s. In 1883 the Brooklyn Bridge made the island even more accessible to the Manhattan masses, who flocked to the island's beach, making it the most densely occupied place in the world. The urban masses demanded to be entertained, however, thus the need for pleasure became paramount in the island's development. Typical of the time, what happened on Coney Island was the attempt to conjugate the quest for pleasure and the obsession with progress.
The result was the first American "roller coaster," the Switchback Railway, built by LaMarcus Adna Thompson in 1884. In 1888, the short-lived Flip-Flap coaster, predecessor of the 1901 Loop-the-Loop, used centrifugal force to keep riders in their seats, and an amazed public paid admission to watch. By 1890 the use of electricity made it possible to create a false daytime, thus prolonging entertainment to a full twenty-four hours a day.
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The nucleus of Coney Island was Captain Billy Boyton's Sea Lion Park, opened in 1895, and made popular by the first large Shoot-the-Chutes ride in America. In competition with Boyton, George C. Tilyou opened Steeplechase Park in 1897, where science and technology came together for pleasure and Victorian inhibitions were lifted. The park was centered around one of the most popular rides on Coney Island, the Steeplechase Race Course, in which four couples "raced" each other atop wheeled, wooden horses. Steeplechase Park burned in 1907, but Tilyou rebuilt and reopened it the following year, and it remained in operation until 1964.
When Boyton went broke, Frederic Thompson and Elmer Dundy took over Sea Lion Park, remodeled it and opened it as Luna Park in 1903. Luna was a thematic park where visitors could even board a huge airship and experience an imaginative journey to the moon from one hundred feet in the air. Coney Island was the testing ground for revolutionary architectural designs, and Luna Park was an architectural spectacle, a modern yet imaginary city built on thirty-eight acres and employing seventeen hundred people during the summer season, with its own telegraph office, cable office, wireless office, and telephone service. For Thompson, Luna Park was an architectural training ground before he moved to Manhattan to apply his talent to a real city. Luna Park eventually fell into neglect and burned in 1944. The land became a parking lot in 1949.
In the meantime, Senator William H. Reynolds was planning a third park on Coney Island, "the park to end all parks." The new park was aptly called Dreamland. In Reynolds's words, this was "the first time in the History of Coney Island Amusement that an effort has been made to provide a place of Amusement that appeals to all classes." Ideology had got hold of entertainment. Opening in 1904, Dreamland was located by the sea and was noticeable for its lack of color--everything was snow white. The general metaphor was that Dreamland represented a sort of underwater Atlantis. There were detailed reconstructions of various natural disasters--the eruption of Vesuvius at Pompeii, the San Francisco earthquake, the burning of Rome--as well as a simulated ride in a submarine, two Shoot-the-Chute rides, and, interestingly, the Incubator Hospital, where premature babies were nursed. Other Dreamland attractions were the Blue Dome of Creation, the "Largest Dome in the World," representing the universe; the "End of the World according to the Dream of Dante"; three theaters; a simulated flight over Manhattan--before the first airplane had flown; a huge model of Venice; a complete replica of Switzerland; and the Japanese Teahouse. One of the most important structures of Dreamland was the Beacon Tower, 375 feet high and illuminated by one hundred thousand electric lights, visible from a distance of more than thirty miles. Dreamland was a success insofar as it reproduced almost any kind of experience and human sensation. In May 1911, just before a more efficient fire-fighting apparatus was due to be installed, a huge fire broke out fanned by a strong sea wind. In only three hours Dreamland was completely destroyed. It was Coney's last spectacle. Manhattan took over as the place of architectural invention.
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, 2002 Gale Group.
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