In Memoriam: 10 Much Mourned Brooklyn Institutions
Dreamland
Coney Island used to be completely out of control. If you visit Luna Park today and ride the Cyclone or the Wonder Wheel, you’ll get a certain thrilling sensation (although that could just be the whiplash) but that is nothing compared to what it used to be. Out of every ill-fated Coney Island amusement park, Dreamland is the one that I most wish I could have visited. Open only from 1904 to 1911, Dreamland was ambitious in its scope and featured what was considered to be elegant architecture, along with “education” exhibits, and “one million electric light bulbs illuminating and outlining its buildings—quite a novelty at the time.” There was “a railway that ran through a Swiss alpine landscape, imitation Venetian canals with gondolas…and a demonstration of firefighting in which two thousand people pretended to put out a blazing six-story building fire.” There was also a “‘Lilliputian Village’ with three hundred dwarf inhabitants,” which sounds terrible and clearly should never be replicated, but, you know, times were different. Different and horrible. However, some good did come out of Dreamland. The park was actually where the first infant incubators for premature babies were ever used. At that time, hospitals did not want to use the new invention, so babies were incubated at an amusement park in Coney Island and put on display because, sure, that makes perfect sense. How can anyone not wish they could visit? Sadly, Dreamland suffered a tragic fate when a fire started in the Hell Gate section of the park, destroying everything and even causing the park’s animals to run loose in the streets of Coney Island. We’re talking lions. RIP Dreamland, you crazy, crazy place.