The Fall of Coney Island: Brooklyn's Lost Playground

The Fall of Coney Island: Brooklyn's Lost Playground At its peak, a million people crowded onto three miles of Brooklyn sand in a single day. A century later, much of Coney Island is vacant lots. This is the story of how America's greatest playground fell apart. In its golden age, Coney Island held three of the most spectacular amusement parks the world had ever seen: Steeplechase, Luna Park, and Dreamland, lit by hundreds of thousands of electric bulbs and drawing crowds from across the country. Then came the fire that ended it all in a single night, a nickel subway fare that filled the beach but starved the parks, a planning commissioner who wanted the amusements gone, and a developer who threw a party to knock the last park down. From the 1911 Dreamland fire to Robert Moses to Fred Trump's demolition of Steeplechase, this is the full rise and fall of the place they once called America's Playground, and a look at the few icons that still survive today. Sources include the Coney Island History Project, Heart of Coney Island, PBS American Experience, and contemporary newspaper accounts of the 1911 fire. If you enjoy long-form history of the vanished American century, subscribe for a new documentary every week.