Thread by @marinamaral2

Camel riding, Coney Island, New York, 1905. Luna Park.

Luna Park was an amusement park in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. The park was mostly destroyed by a fire in 1944, never reopened, and was demolished two years later.

At night all the domes, spires and towers were lit with over 250,000 electric lights. At the center of the park in the middle of a lake was the 200 foot tall Electric Tower that was decorated with twenty thousand incandescent lamps.

Luna Park turned on its lights and opened its gates to a crowd of 60,000 spectators precisely at 8:05pm on May 16, 1903, coinciding with the timing of sunset on that Saturday night.

The Electric Tower

Rare panoramic picture of Luna Park taken from the Chutes shortly after opening in 1903.

At 8:05pm, all of Luna's 250,000 lights were turned on at once, 'revealing lakes, streams, towers and winding pathways'. In a time when light bulbs were used sparingly, Luna Park had so many that it glowed at night.

With roughly fifty buildings and offering thirty-nine shows, Luna Park had cost an estimated $1.5 million to build.

Luna Park's midway amusements centered around three major new attractions, all simulated journeys, marketed as 'Over the Sea', 'On the Sea' and 'Under the Sea'.

'On the Sea' was officially called War of the Worlds. The show was housed in an ominous-looking building with numerous massive gun turrets protruding outward high above the entrance and making up part of Luna's skyline.

The plot, like that of any good action flick, may not have been entirely plausible but definitely set the stage for some massive explosions. The combined navies of Europe, totaling some forty large battleships, approached New York harbor to attack the United States.

This armada, in which each ship was carefully modeled after an actual European warship, started off in the distant horizon. It slowly approached until the battleships and destroyers grew to full size and fired their guns.

The audience, seated in one of Fort Hamilton's turrets, felt the ground shake. Patriotic cheers would go up as Fort Hamilton fired back, splintering an enemy ship, which was maneuvered using electrical machinery.

The majority of the foreign fleet was sunk before the surviving ships made their hurried escape, but not before one of Fort Hamilton's bastions had been blown up in the firefight by an enormous enemy shell.

'Under the Sea' was considered the most technologically-advanced 'mechanical device or illusion that has ever been shown'. It took riders on a completely realistic submarine journey to the North Pole.

The building was massive, covering 65,000 square feet.

Between 100 and 200 riders would board a replica of a Holland-class submarine by walking down a ramp and sit facing large portholes showing the ocean around them.

The submarine submerged under water into the 24-foot-deep pool it was housed in. A total of three-and-one-half miles of canvas held on twenty-four spools showed the submarine traveling underwater, passing schools of fish, sharks, and even a shipwreck.

The temperature would get colder the deeper the submarine went and the closer it got to the North Pole.

Arriving at the North Pole without having moved an inch, passengers were greeted by Eskimos and their dogs, and a family of polar bears could be seen in the distance.

Refrigeration equipment blasted cold air and produced the icebergs that surrounded the submarine.

Riders were encouraged to take chips of ice as temporary mementos on hot summer days before witnessing the aura borealis as they boarded the submarine for the voyage back home.

Further reading: heartofconeyisland.com/luna-park-cone…