Coney Island - was the modern American mass-culture industry born here?

To find an American realm where fantasy was made material and the pleasure principle ruled, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford Cn say visitors should have visited their exhibition, Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008 in 2015. If not, I recommend the book of the same name, edited by Robin Jaffee Frank (Yale University Press, 2015)

The publishers wrote about the book: “A captivating look at Coney Island and its iconic place in the history of American art. Called America's playground, it is a world-famous resort and national cul­tural symbol that has inspired music, literature and films. This groundbreaking book is the first to look at the site's enduring status as inspiration for artists throughout the ages, from its in­ception as an elite seaside resort in the mid-C19th, to its evolution into an entertainment mecca for the masses.

How artists chose to portray Coney Island from 1861-2008 mirr­ored the aspirations and disappointments of the era. This dazzling catalogue highlighted 200+ images from Coney Island's history, incl­uding paintings, photographs, posters, films, architectural artefacts and carousel animals. An array of artists was represented, from George Bellows, William Merritt Chase and Joseph Stella to Diane Arbus and Weegee. Scholarly essays analysed Coney Island through its art as a place that reflected the collective soul of the nation”.

Yet was it always glamorous? I was visiting the USA in 1974 and asked my New York aunt and uncle to take me to Coney Island for the first time. “Oh no”, said my aunt, pulling herself up to her full 5’1. “Coney Island is where drunken sailors with tattoos lounge around, leering at girls who have sex before marriage”. My aunt was not going to expose her relatives to Sodom by the Sea!

"The Great Coney Island Water Carnival" lithograph
by Strobridge Lithographing Company, 1898
Cincinnati Art Museum

Coney Island was always a small strip of land in the very south western tip of Brooklyn, looking directly onto the Atlantic Ocean beach. The first glamorous hotel, Coney Island Hotel, opened for business in 1829. But there were no ferry lines until 1847, so the reader has to guess what the place looked like, from the bare sand dunes of the 1840s. Then use the photos and paintings to imagine the crowded action of the 1860s, the brothels and gambling dens of the inter-war era, to decline in the late C20th. Even the famous amusement park Astroland (1962-2008) closed, after decades of urban decline.

One of the most famous features was Luna Park that opened in 1903 and was a fantasy world with live camels and elephants. But an elephant accidentally killed a spectator, so the park owners wanted to cash in – they planned execute the animal in a huge public event, charging admission for the spectacle and for the ice-cream. Eventually it was cut back to invited guests and press only. And the owners agreed to use a more sure method of strangling the elephant with ropes tied to a steam-powered winch, with added poison and electrocution for fun. A small gallery in the Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland Exhibition was devoted to this 1904 elephant electrocution, filmed by the Edison Co.

Luna Park
opened 1903

The NY Review of Books loved the scenes from the one-reel Edison comedy Rube and Mandy at Coney Island (1903) which merged with Leo McKay’s painting of Steeplechase Park. This 1910 wooden cut-out cartoon of Mae West and Jimmy Durante, both of whom got their starts in Coney Island concert saloons, was hung oppos­ite a selection of Sunday pages by the master draughtsman Winsor McCay. His comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland was a great graphic expression of Edwardian Coney. Reference after reference!

Visitors could not help but note the visual tumult of Joseph Stella’s oil painting Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras (1913-1914), a gaudy whirl of abst­ract shapes. This cacophony of electric lights, gyrating dancers, and radiating steel beams of the Ferris wheel and roller coasters was Stella’s first subject after arriving in the USA from Italy. He must have felt dazed.

Dreamland (1904-11) was a refined and elegant amusement park with Venetian Canals and Swiss alpine countryside; alas it only lasted 7 years before being tragically destroyed by fire. Luna Park was an amusement centre that opened in 1903, about the same time as Dreamland. Fortunately it lasted much longer - until 1944 when fire destroyed it. This amazingly popular facility was never rebuilt.

After the war, when the Brooklyn Rapid Transit company had extended its street cars and subway lines to Coney Island, the boardwalk op­ened in 1921. Its cheap food stalls attracted thousands of people in summer, especially young families. But once the elegant fairyland of Dreamland had disappeared, Coney Island became rougher and tougher.

Pip and Flip (twins with microcephaly)

by Reginald Marsh, 1932
123 x 123 cm, Brooklyn Museum Exhibition 

Coney Island was still very popular as a family resort in WW2, the very time when Europe was committing mass murder on an unthink­able scale. The entire area began its slow decline when the largest area, Luna Park, burned to the ground in summer 1944. Via Weegee’s stun­ning news photo of the ruins, the image of absolute devastation disturbed the exhibition’s final section. The old-fashioned postcards and the photos Weegee took of WW2 Coney Island crowd were from a vantage point on the Steeplechase Pier. But Steeplechase itself was closed in 1964 and was demolished a few years later by the real estate mogul Fred Trump (sic).

McNay Museum in San Antonio Tx, which showed the collection in mid 2016, clearly summarised Coney Island’s contribution: The modern American mass-culture industry was born at Coney Island!! Was that true? I am not an American, I don’t like the idea that mass culture is a product to be industrialised, and I have never visited Coney Island. Perhaps American readers will chime in.