Coney Island

Down and Out on a Dyckman Street Barge

Texas Guinan

“Today, Isobel and Margaret have only memories, but with ambition undimmed.  They exist in poverty on a discarded and rotting river barge.  It wouldn’t even float were it not jammed in the mud of stagnant Sherman Creek, near the Dyckman Street landing in New York.” (San Jose News, August 8, 1928)   As the summer [...]

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Fort George Amusement Park

Fort George Amusement Park in turn of the century Inwood, New York City

In 1895, on the same spot where George Washington and his band of Revolutionaries defended a British assault after the Battle of Brooklyn, a glorious and magnificent amusement park rivaling Coney Island opened near the northeastern end of Manhattan. The Fort George Amusement park was located in what is now Highbridge Park between 190th and [...]

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Wonderland

Wonderland in Inwood.

Shortly after the turn of the century a small group of investors, led by real estate “wheeler-dealer” Andrew J. Cobe, made a land grab in northern Manhattan.  Their vision—a sprawling thirty-one acre amusement park to be built on the current site of Columbia University’s Baker Field. Cobe was a shameless self-promoter who had been kicked [...]

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