Luna Park was an amusement park that operated in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, United States, from 1903 to 1944. The park was located on a site bounded by Surf Avenue to the south, West 8th Street to the east, Neptune Avenue to the north, and West 12th Street to the west. Luna Park was located partly on the grounds of the small park it replaced, Sea Lion Park, which operated between 1895 and 1902. It was the second of the three original, very large, iconic parks built on Coney Island; the others were Steeplechase Park (1897, by George C. Tilyou) and Dreamland (1904, by William H. Reynolds). At Coney Island's peak in the middle of the 20th century's first decade, the three amusement parks competed with each other and with many independent amusements.
Luna Park's co-founders Frederic Thompson and Elmer "Skip" Dundy had created the "A Trip To The Moon" ride, which had been highly popular during the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, and operated at Steeplechase Park in 1902. Luna Park opened on May 16, 1903, and was highly profitable until Dundy died in 1907. Thompson operated the park alone until 1912, when his lease was canceled. The Luna Amusement Company owned the park from 1911 to 1939; during the Great Depression, creditors foreclosed on Luna Park twice. The park was leased to a syndicate in 1940 and continued to operate during World War II. Over the years, the park's owners constantly added new attractions and shows.
The park's western half was destroyed by a fire in August 1944 and never reopened, while the eastern half closed in September 1944. Although some rides on Surf Avenue continued to operate after 1944, much of the site remained closed for several years; the area was redeveloped as the Luna Park Houses between 1958 and 1962. Though another amusement park opened nearby in 2010 and was named Luna Park to commemorate the original, it is unrelated to the 1903 park.
Development Between about 1880 and World War II, Coney Island was the largest amusement area in the United States, attracting several million visitors annually. Sea Lion Park opened in 1895 and was Coney Island's first amusement area to charge entry fees; this, in turn, spurred the construction of George C. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park in 1897, the neighborhood's first major amusement park.
Background In 1901, Frederic Thompson and Elmer "Skip" Dundy created a wildly successful ride called "A Trip To The Moon" as part of the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York. The name of the fanciful "airship" (complete with flapping wings) that was the main part of the ride was Luna, the Latin word for the moon. The airship, and the park that was subsequently built around it, may have been named after Dundy's sister in Des Moines, Luna Dundy Newman. George C. Tilyou invited Thompson and Dundy to move their attraction to Steeplechase for the 1902 season. The ride performed poorly during that season, which was extremely rainy. Thompson and Dundy opted to establish their own amusement park at the end of the season following a disagreement with Tilyou.
Thompson and Dundy agreed to take over the site of Paul Boyton's 16-acre (6.5 ha) Sea Lion Park in August 1902. As part of the deal, they leased some land from Frederick Kister, and they also leased a strip of land on West 12th Street for 25 years. Sea Lion Park had several centerpiece rides, but low attendance during the 1902 season and competition with Steeplechase Park had prompted Boyton to leave the amusement park business. Thompson and Dundy also leased the adjacent site of the Elephantine Colossus Hotel, which had burned down in 1896. This gave them , all the land north of Surf Avenue and south of Neptune Avenue, between West 8th and West 12th Streets.
Construction and opening Dundy was in charge of raising capital for the project, while Thompson was responsible for the park's layout and architecture. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle initially estimated that Thompson and Dundy would spend $200,000 renovating Sea Lion Park. Ultimately, the men spent $700,000 (although they advertised it as $1 million) totally rebuilding the park and expanding its attractions.Woody Register, The Kid of Coney Island, Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements, Oxford University Press · 2001, page 339 Wall Street financiers and Coney Island speculators each contributed half the project's cost. By November 1902, Thompson aimed to open the park by May 2 of the following year. Topsy the elephant, which Boyton had bought that season to add to the menagerie of animals at Sea Lion Park, was involved in demolishing some of the old rides. During an October event that involved Topsy hauling the airship Luna from Steeplechase to its new location, handler William Alt was arrested for disorderly conduct after assaulting the elephant with a pitchfork and then turning it loose to wander down Surf Avenue. In an organized publicity stunt, Thompson and Dundy announced they would hang Topsy and sell tickets to the event. Following an intervention from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Thompson and Dundy agreed to a more humane method of poisoning, electrocuting, and strangling the elephant in a smaller private affair that was captured in the short film Electrocuting an Elephant. Thompson and Dundy ultimately electrocuted Topsy, then killed her using cyanide, in January 1903.
Thompson and Dundy planned to add new rides including a flower garden, a German village, and a Trip to the Moon attraction. The lagoon and the Shoot the Chute attraction were the only parts of Sea Lion Park to be retained. Early plans called for Luna Park to include a tower with 38,000 lights. The park's original rides and attractions also included an infant incubator, a Shoot the Chute ride, a three-ring circus, and a Fire and Flames show that employed over a thousand performers. Luna Park unofficially opened on April 5, 1903, with a live show. The same month, Leo Wyent and George M. Foley sued to prevent Thompson and Dundy from issuing a concession allowing a third party to sell cigars and alcoholic beverages at the park. Thompson and Dundy planned to sell alcoholic beverages at one location in the park, the German Village.
Calling itself "the heart of Coney Island", Luna Park turned on its lights on May 16, 1903, at 8 p.m. The park's gates opened five minutes later to a crowd of 45,000 guests. It featured 39 shows and initially contained 53 buildings. Admission to the park was ten cents. An additional fee was required for some rides, ranging up to 25 cents for the most elaborate attractions, although the park also hosted free shows. Luna Park was accessible from Culver Depot, the terminals of the West End and Sea Beach railroad lines. Its general manager D. S. Smith had arranged for the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) to operate express trains directly to Park Row Terminal in Manhattan during the park's operating hours, terminating directly at Luna Park's main entrance; this arrangement continued until 1909. The park was extremely popular, recording 142,000 guests on Independence Day in 1903. Thompson and Dundy had recovered 90 percent of Luna Park's construction cost less than three months after its grand opening.
Operation
1900s Because of the success of Luna Park, competition for visitors ramped up on Coney Island. Former state senator William H. Reynolds announced plans in July 1903 to build a hippodrome rivaling Luna Park, and Reynolds opened a third large-scale park, Dreamland, the next year. Reynolds wanted Dreamland to surpass Luna Park in every way. As such, Dreamland featured several times as many lights as Luna Park, an even bigger central tower, more refined architecture, and (according to one source) more "high-class entertainment". At Coney Island's peak in the mid-1900s, Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park competed with each other and with many independent amusements. Dreamland survived until 1911, when it was destroyed in one of the many fires common on Coney Island during the early 20th century.
Thompson and Dundy were constantly changing the park's attractions. Ahead of the 1904 season, Thompson and Dundy expanded Luna Park by , bringing its total area to . The expansion included replicas of additional locales, a Japanese tea garden, a replica of a Himalayan mountain above the Coney Island Creek, and a $250,000 reproduction of the Delhi Durbar. Thompson and Dundy also added several shows, including "Night and Morning" and a series of pageants hosted on a stage. A second deck was added around the central lagoon, increasing the park's capacity by 70,000. George Kessler of the Sea Beach Land Company agreed to buy the land under Luna Park in June 1904 for over $1 million; the sale did not affect Thompson and Dundy's lease. Kessler initially took an option on the site; he decided to exercise his option in September 1904. At the time, Luna Park had already accommodated two million guests.
For the 1905 season, L. A. Thompson (who was not related to Fred Thompson) added a scenic railway-style roller coaster to Luna Park, replacing the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea attraction. Luna Park added several shows ahead of the 1906 season, in addition to two slides. Dundy died in early 1907, leaving Fred Thompson as the sole operator of Luna Park. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said Dundy's death "was a severe blow to Mr. Thompson". Nonetheless, Thompson continued to add to the park, employing four elephants and 700 men during the off-season. For the 1907 season, Thompson added a carousel called the Ocean Wave; in addition, he expanded the ballroom and lagoon, and he relocated the entrance away from the elevated train lines.
Coney Island had reached its peak popularity by the late 1900s. The park employed over 2,000 people each season, and it accommodated five million guests a year. The park had sold 31 million tickets in its first five seasons, leading Thompson to say in early 1908: "I believe this surpasses everything in the history of amusement enterprises anywhere in the world." Some of the attractions were replaced with ten live shows during the 1908 season, including Trip to the Moon. Thompson added another live show in 1909, and he also continued to offer novelties, including elephant rides (which attracted guests such as actor Douglas Fairbanks). That year, New York City mayor George B. McClellan Jr. attempted to prevent the park from staging live shows on Sundays, claiming that the shows were illegal; a New York Supreme Court justice granted an injunction in July 1909, allowing Luna Park to host shows on Sundays.
1910s
By October 1910, the New York State Banking Department wanted to place Luna Park into receivership because the firm of Thompson and Dundy had gone bankrupt. However, the park's lawyers contended that the firm was no longer in control of Luna Park. A New York Supreme Court justice ultimately declined to appoint a receiver for the park. For the 1911 season, Thompson added attractions and shows such as Sinking of the Maine and the Monkey Music Hall. The Luna Amusement Company, headed by Barron Collier, took over the park about the same year. The park's scenery-storage building, a restaurant, and two rides burned down in a large fire in December 1911, several months after Dreamland's destruction, although the rest of the park remained undamaged. Thompson ran Luna Park until March 1912, when the Sea Beach Land Company and Charles C. Overton moved to evict Thompson; the eviction was finalized the next month. For the 1912 season, the new operators added attractions such as the Kiss Waltz and the Turkey Trot.