City of Lights

Asbury Park's Boardwalk Circa 1980

1978.

I do miss the lights. Traveling carnivals still come to Asbury Park and work their magic in Bradley Park, just inland from Convention Hall. But the big permanent rides are gone, and I miss the lights.

There are still a few attractions for children on the boardwalk - a water park, miniature golf, and a pinball museum that has four small rides out front. Last summer my four-year-old grandson was quite fond of the school bus, which moved and made sounds when you fed it three quarters. He was a little bit fond of the train engine. The Batman car and the Flintstones car seemed to attract smaller children. There is also a playground on the beach, not far from the pinball museum.

1981.

It's not the same. Have a look at this Ferris wheel preening in the twilight.

1978.

I find myself entranced, and I can only imagine the effect on children. 

Let's have a look at the carousel house, which is attached to the Casino building. 

1978.

And inside the carousel house. (The carousel was built in 1923 and moved from Asbury Park to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in 1992.)

1981.

As nearly as I can tell, the first carnival people who glommed on to the idea of using electric lights to create an evening wonderland were the builders of Luna Park, one of the three big amusement parks that were in the Coney Island entertainment district before World War I. The key man here was Frederic Thompson.

John Kasson traces Thompson's inspiration to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, also known as the White City for all its white buildings, This event had a strong and lasting influence on American architecture and urban design, and it also explored the outdoor potential of electric lighting, which was only beginning to displace gaslit street lamps. "At night the splendor of the scene was further enhanced by an unprecedented battery of floodlights, using three times as much electricity as the rest of Chicago." (John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century, 1978, pp. 21, 61-66.) 

1978.

Professor Kasson reports the result in Luna Park: "Borrowing from the example of the White City, Thompson studded Luna with a quarter million electric lights. The same buildings that excited wonder during the day assumed a dazzling new aspect; the strings of lights seemed to sketch an insubstantial, dreamlike scene" (p. 66). 

As competitors refused to be left behind, the lights of Coney Island proliferated, and news of this unique little world soon spread across the globe. Charles Denson argues that, by 1904, Coney Island "was the mechanical amusement center of the world. No longer just a resort, it was a phenomenon that attracted curious high-brow visitors such as Sigmund Freud and Maxim Gorky. Coney's electric skyline was unlike anything ever seen before. Gorky described it as 'shapely towers of miraculous castles, palaces and temples. Golden gossamer threads tremble in the air. They intertwine in transparent, flaming patterns, which flutter and melt away in love with their own beauty mirrored in the waters." (Charles Denson, Coney Island: Lost and Found, 2002, p. 31.) 

Gorky is perhaps best known today as the author of a play called The Lower Depths, which was first produced in 1902.  It was directed by a fellow named Konstantin Stanislavski. Gorky visited Coney Island in 1906 and actually did not approve of the amusements, but the nighttime view clearly knocked his socks off. (To see his essay on Coney Island, entitled "Boredom," click here.) 

1978.

I can't match Gorky for florid prose, but around 1980 I found myself reconnecting with my childhood sense of wonder. Looking again at these pictures forty years later, I find myself reconnecting with two of my younger selves.

There was enchantment on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, all those years ago, and it was a lively place after dark.

1981.

My sense is that Gorky's basic concern about Coney Island was that the amusements were not uplifting - they didn't make you a better person. In this he was right, but out of sync with the audience, which did not want to be uplifted - it wanted the release of amusement, and if the result was childlike wonder, happy shrieks, or raucous laughter, so much the better. The carnies knew their audience well, and they delivered.

1978.

See also What Streets Can Learn From Boardwalks, Tillie Goes Biking.