Coney Island, New York City, USA
(Geo. P. Hall & Son / New York Historical Society / Getty)
When Frederic Thompson and Elmer Dundy built their ‘A Trip to the Moon’ ride for an exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901, they had a hit on their hands. The centerpiece of the ride was an airship named Luna, powered by wings which flapped.
Moving the ride to Coney Island’s Steeplechase Park for 1902, Thompson and Dundy then leased more land and created Luna Park, using 1,000 spires, a quarter of a million lights, and $700,000. On its opening night, 60,000 people paid ten cents each to enter Luna Park; rides cost extra.
But in 1908, Luna Park was eclipsed by Dreamland, which had a million lights. Dundy died in 1907 and Thompson went bankrupt. Luna Park continued to exist, but successive owners struggled to realize any potential it possessed. In 1944, it was wiped out by fire.
‘Luna Park offers to the millions of pleasure seekers of this city and its environs a show place such as the ingenuity of the showman of the world has never devised before. World’s fair, circus, hippodrome, menagerie, pleasure garden, swept with the salt breeze on which the spray of the ocean is hardly dry, a fairy land for man and child alike, it offers more to the eye and kindred senses than could be absorbed in a week of constant junketing.’
Advert for Luna Park, The Evening World, Saturday, May 7, 1904
