“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)

The Spokesman-Review, September 24, 1928.

As the summer of 1928 meandered lazily into autumn, the sensational story of two once fabulously affluent sisters, thrust into poverty, shot through newsrooms coast to coast and filtered its way like caffeine into the American psyche.

Earlier in the season, a reporter, so the tale goes, wandered down to a floating shantytown on the banks of the Harlem River, along Dyckman Street, to verify a rumor that two beautiful young women, well-heeled daughters of a former State Governor, had been discovered living amid the muddy squalor of a ramshackle, but well-established, houseboat colony on the northern end of Manhattan.

Squatters. Barely enough to eat. Destitute.  Forced to work in speakeasies.

Lives gone awry, like Manhattan itself, drowning in an uncontrollable river of bootleg whiskey, gangsters and Jazz.

Appallingly, the story appeared to be true.

William A. Stone campaign button.

Living on a rotting barge, the reporter found Blueblood sisters Isobel and Margaret Stone, daughters of William Alexis Stone, the twenty-second Governor of Pennsylvania, who had died eight years earlier at the age of 73.

Described by the media of his day as the “best Governor Pennsylvania ever had,” Stone made his fortune as a coal operator and once counted himself a confidant of Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur and William McKinley.

The Stone sisters had grown up wandering the polished marble halls of Washington. Thiers’ had been a childhood of luxury and excess. As toddlers, the smiling tots were media darlings affectionately nicknamed “Pets of the White House” by the elite Washington press corps.

When William Stone passed away, his holdings were estimated at $3,000,000. But his daughters were in for a painful surprise.   As the estate entered probate the sisters discovered their father had died nearly bankrupt— his fortunes reduced to practically nothing after a series of ill-advised stock speculations.

By some accounts the girls each inherited a paltry $3,000.

“We were left in the house,” said Isobel. “But we had no food.  We had to go to work and we did not know what work meant, for it had never entered into our lives.  We imagined that money grew on trees.” (The Evening Independent, July 21, 1928)

Isobel was 23 and Margaret, who preferred being called “Peggy,” was 25 when the reporter first encountered the sisters on the riverfront near the eastern base of Dyckman Street.

Their home, if one can call it that, was accessible only by a borrowed rowboat—one of many derelict vessels mired in the putrid river mud.

San Jose Mercury News, August 8,1928.

“At best, the barge is a dismal looking, ramshackle affair, outside as well as in.  The furniture was left behind as not being worth moving.  The kitchen stove was partially concealed and its original purpose blocked by a yellow cover.  Opera scores, musical books and writing pads indicated it now was doubling as a worktable. The only suggestion of beauty was a green Spanish shawl draped over an ugly mission rocker.” (San Jose News, August 8, 1928)

Peggy, a divorcee, once married to Richard R. O’Neil, took a shift at a box factory, and, for the most part, kept to herself.

As news coverage of their quandary grew, Peggy, a bashful and languid creature, afraid of the press, often retreated to a private area of the four-room barge to avoid reporters. An artistic young thing, her sculptures provided her only solace.

She left sister Isobel to do most of the talking.

Isobel, comely and charming, seemed to relish her moment of fame, despite the ugly circumstances that cast her down  to this reduced and humiliating station in life.

Isobel Stone, Nunda Sun, August 3, 1928.

According to one newspaper account, “In appearance, Isobel is what most would call ‘arty’.” Her extraordinary lovely red-gold hair, her best feature, is cut a la Greenwich Village, up one side and down on the other, and she wears one heavy, old silver earring.  Tall, slim and graceful, she doubtless would wear clothes stunningly, though she admits that now her wardrobe is not so dictated so much by her taste as by her finances.” (San Jose News, August 8, 1928)

Isobel said of their unusual abode, “It isn’t because we love the great out-of-doors, or are being eccentric.  It’s because we get this old moss-covered barge rent-free—and when you haven’t anything in your pocketbook, that’s a big consideration.” (San Jose News, August 8, 1928)

She and Peggy, Isobel admitted, were at least partially to blame for their own misfortune.  Perhaps naïve, the two aspired to support themselves as working artists. Had they simply married, or taken some easier path, their fates might have been quite different.

“You see,” Isobel remarked, “my sister and I didn’t run true to form.  We both love art and have aspired to artistic careers. We haven’t asked our rich relatives for help.  So we will have to find our own way out of this poverty.” (San Jose News, August 8, 1928)

Isobel spoke of what she called  “the reverse side of success”—of singing in nightclubs under assumed names.  “I’ve had to face all the ugliness that as a rich girl I would have been carefully shielded from.” (San Jose News, August 8, 1928)

The appealing redhead attempted various artistic endeavors to stay afloat.  She wrote poetry, sang ballads on the radio and even wrote a book of verse—which had yet to find a publisher—but all these artistic exercises earned only a pittance.

Poem by Isobel Stone published in The Spokesman-Review on September 24, 1928.

Isobel soon found herself reduced to a lounge act—singing in the same nightclubs and speakeasies that would once have considered her a VIP customer.

How far she had fallen.

“I am a lyric soprano, and my great ambition is to enter an operatic career.  I made my stage debut in ‘Aphrodite’ at the Century Theatre seven years ago.  Later I sang with the San Carlo Opera Company, taking the role of Siebel in ‘Faust.’” (Montreal Gazette, July 24, 1928)

“Of late I have been reduced to singing at some of the nightclubs, which I detest.  If I had lots of money I would never go to a nightclub, but when one is desperate, one has no choice. I don’t drink or smoke, and that makes it more difficult when you are supposed to entertain the men who frequent these clubs.  At each club where I sang, I have used a different name, and I have emptied more glasses of champagne, when no one was looking, than I can reckon.” (Montreal Gazette, July 24, 1928)

Isobel Stone chopping wood, The Spokesman-Review September 24, 1928.

Often, life on the soggy old barge left Isobel too feeble to honor scheduled auditions.

She would sadly recall, “I have an old piano, but it is wrapped up in an old quilt, and stands out there on the barge, too rain soaked to be of any use to me, so I practice when I can at one of the music publishers downtown.  This spring I had an opportunity to appear at an audition of the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company, but I had a very bad cold and was unable to go.” (Montreal Gazette, July 24, 1928)

This was not the usual rags-to-riches story the public had become accustomed to.  No.  This was a different type of story indeed.  This was Cinderella in reverse. And readers were fascinated.

Soon the newswires were zinging with reports of the Stone sisters’ incredible plunge from the splendid ballrooms of the Governor’s mansion to the privations of a dank Harlem River barge.

The very same year Orwell moved to Paris to begin researching his classic tome, Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933, the Stone sisters had descended into almost unfathomable poverty.  The sociological aspects of this modern drama eventually captured the attention of readers around the globe.

For Peggy, her studies at the Julien Academy in Paris seemed but a faraway dream.

Gone too, for Isobel, were the afternoon horseback lessons under the tutelage of Max Oser in Switzerland.  Her exciting years as captain of the basketball team at the Pennsylvania College for Women evaporating like the late morning mist on the Harlem.

Isobel’s outlook on her prospects were bleak, “You can take it from me that the way from the Governor’s mansion to the star’s dressing room is a long, hard road.” (San Jose News, August 8,1928)

Isobel aspired to be a Broadway sensation, or better yet, an Opera star, but she complained to one reporter of, “a run of bad luck—ill health, and that sort of thing.” (San Jose News, August 8,1928)

Texas Guinan in 1929 photo.

As news of the Stone sister’s plight reached near saturation levels, an unlikely patron, by the name of “Tex” Guinan, stepped in with relief in the form of a job offer.

Mary Louise Cecilia “Texas” Guinan was a sometime actress and legendary saloonkeeper who achieved celebrity status during the Prohibition years that followed the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919. During those dry years, which would run through December 5, 1933, Guinan ran a string of high-class speakeasies, including the famous 300 Club on West 54^th Street.

Guinan’s venues provided nightly bootleg booze and jazz soaked soirees and catered to wealthy a clientele, including eager out of town business types, for whom she coined the phrase “butter and egg men.”  Scantily clad dancers, trained to sap the cash from the wallets of their moneyed guests, pushed twenty-five dollar bottles of champagne and twenty-dollar quarts of watered down whisky.  In 1926 alone, Guinan was said to have grossed some $700,000.   She often greeted her more famous customers, who included George Gershwin, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Al Jolson, with her catchphrase, “Hello Suckers!”

Texas Guinan Salon Royal advertisement, 1928.

Thus, it came to be that Texas Guinan, the sassy, brazen, bottle-blonde, Queen of the Night, who made millions running illegal enterprises, offered the young, shell-shocked Isobel Stone a job in July of 1928.

Soon, Isobel found herself singing in Guinan’s club, the Salon Royal, on 310 West Fifty-eighth Street.

Guinan immediately used the job offer to garner some publicity of her own.

In a press release, Guinan announced that she had made the offer to give Isobel and her sister a chance to get back on their feet.  Guinan apologized for the venue—explaining Isobel was far to great a talent to sing in mere nightclubs—however, “Tex” boasted, she had arranged for various operatic movers and shakers to sit in on the misfortunate young Blueblood’s performances.

In an interview, Guinan insisted that she was interested solely in Isobel’s “ambitions of an operatic career and had engaged her to tide over the emergency period.”  (NYT’s, July 27, 1928)

Guinan also used her pulpit to chastise the Stone sister’s former social circle.

“It seems strange that with all the friends that former Governor Stone must have had that none of them has come forward to assist this gifted girl.” (NYT’s, July 27, 1928)

For while, it appeared Guinan had saved the day.

Texas Guinan print by Gustav Rehberger.

But “Tex” was no doting mother figure.  She was a gangster draped in furs and pearls—her associates included Dutch Schultz, Hymie Weiss and even Al Capone. Her clubs, typically located inside hotels, doubled as brothels.

Matchbook cover featuring Texas Guinan, Al Jolson and Isham Jones performing in a Chicago club (note Al Capone is the club manager).

This was no position for a Governor’s daughter.

The lewd sexual expectations of drunken patrons, constantly groping her, eyes red with whiskey and smoke, pupils wild and dilated—not to mention the ever-present threat of police raids.  If she was collared by the dry squads, or worse yet, arrested by vice cops in a prostitution sting, there would be no coming back.

Isobel’s nightclub experiment would prove short-lived.

Soon, she was back on her rotting hulk of wood, ­­­­41 Dyckman Street, contemplating her next move

Here, at the pinnacle of the media frenzy surrounding the Stone sister’s short lived burst of fame, their future uncertain, the below article was written:

The Spokesman-Review
September 24, 1928
Why the Million-Dollar Beauties Had to Live On a Barge
A Strange Trick of Fate Plunged the Blueblood Stone Sisters, Once the “Pets of the White House,” Into Poverty and—Is Bringing Them Back.

Isobel Stone peeling potatoes on her Dyckman Street barge, The Spokesman Review-September 24, 1928.

Yesterday, the lap of luxury.  Today, dire poverty, and a life on a rotting, half-sunken barge.  Tomorrow—?

Thus concisely might be written the history of two beautiful and talented girls, born with proverbial silver spoons in their mouths, reared with the great and the near-great of the United States, and then tossed by frantic fate into the maelstrom of life.

The girls, Isobel Stone and her sister, Margaret, are the daughters of the late W. A. Stone, millionaire governor of Pennsylvania from 1902 to 1906.  No babies ever started life with more portents for good.  Education, culture, money, social position—they had all of those.

Then the jokesmith who controls the tiny thread of things as they are, gave an extra little twitch, and Isobel and Margaret found themselves penniless, living on a barge, facing a terrible struggle to eke out a mere existence—their classic educations of no value, and their social position and money vanished.

When Isobel and Margaret were children and lived in Washington they were called “the pets of the White House,” because they were the favorites of President McKinley.  Their father, then a Congressman from Pittsburgh, had a fortune estimated at $3,000,000 and every luxury and ingenious humanity could provide was showered into the laps of the Stone sisters.

They were educated in France and Switzerland, at the most exclusive schools, and Isobel completed her education in an American convent.  They traveled, studied music and art, while Isobel cultivated her lyric soprano voice and Margaret studied sculpture.  The two girls are related to Princess Murat, of Paris, and while abroad were entertained lavishly by the nobility. More than one noble suitor, including the Prince Victor von Gerstein, sought one or other of the sisters in marriage.

William Alexis Stone

Then came disaster! Governor Stone died and it was discovered that his $3,000,000 estate was really much less than that.  Poor investments were blamed, and the whole estate was valued at $200,000.  Still this is “important money,” and one might believe the Stone sisters still well off.  But it did not happen that way.

The complicated machine of jurisprudence started grinding and the Stone estate was tied up in litigation.  Each of the sisters received a comparatively small sum in cash.

Isobel and “Peggy” started bravely out.  Their aristocratic background gave them hope and determination.  Isobel was the more fortunate of the two.  She took to the stage, and had limited success with small opera companies and secured parts in several musical shows.  But when her “big chance” came along, she had such a bad cold that she could not sing, so she missed out.

Margaret, meanwhile, had been struggling with her sculpture.  She managed to market a few bookends and small pieces, but the market was hard to find and the work was exacting.  With her theatrical career temporarily shattered, Isobel took to writing verse.  She wrote fragile little things, about star-powdered nights, limpid eyes, and love in the realm of spheres.  Some of these sold and some did not.

Gradually the scanty fortunes of the sisters waned and then, one evening, a wan moon witnessed a singular sight.  The two girls stood at the end of a rotting dock at the foot of Dyckman street, New York City.  Around them was piled a profusion of nautical litter.  The moonlight silhouetted their forms against an oily tide and sifted down into the cracks where water bugs lived out their existence in their own way.

Margaret "Peggy" Stone works on a sculpture, The Spokesman Review September 24, 1928.

The silence of decay hung heavy over the stretch of river before them.  Behind them, tier upon tier, rose the mighty city—the heights they had stormed but not taken.  Broadway shot a burst of iridescent arrows at a luminous sky.  In Greenwich Village life was astir with strange doings of artistic cast.

But all these things the Stone sisters were leaving, and they did not look back.  Instead, they climbed into a little rowboat, cast off, and rowed awkwardly toward a dark hulk which loomed in the middle distance. It was the wreck of the barge Nancy May, fast settling into the soft silt of the river bottom, overgrown with moss—a tangle of rotting planks and rusting iron.  For the Nancy May, which they received rent free from a sympathetic engineer, was to be their home for the next few months.

New York Times, July 22, 1928.

Then came the struggle for existence.  Margaret worked assiduously at her sculpture, and Isobel penned poems to the moon.  But the money did not come in fast enough.  They skimped and saved.  They collected driftwood from the murky river, and were happy to see its leaping flame in an improvised fireplace aboard the barge.  The fire chased the early morning mists which sank into the marrow of the two brave girls, and killed budding inhibition.

At last it became apparent that something must be done.  Both girls were suffering from lack of food.  It was finally decided that Isobel would try for a job.  She rowed ashore and made round after round of the theatrical offices.  But Broadway does not like poverty. One must be chic—smart, to “catch on.” Isobel found that life on the barge and lack of new clothes robbed her of these essentials.

But at last she interested certain night club proprietors, and obtained one job after another as hostess or singer, or both.

Isobel Stone dancing in a downtown nightclub, The Spokesman Review, September 24, 1928.

Now came one of the most colorful phases in the lives of the two sisters. For Isobel, used to night life as a patron of the swanky, exclusive clubs, started to work as a paid entertainer.  Her singing elicited an immediate response.  Large-sized tips started to flow her way, and life took on a rosier hue. But still things were not quite to the liking of this aristocratic girl, forced by circumstances to exist on the bounty of night life patrons.

Her duties as hostess were particularly irksome.  “I’ve worked in nearly every night club in New York, under one name or another,” she said. “And of the whole bunch I can say a good word for only one.  We girls used to drink ‘downs’ during the evening.”

A “down” is a small glass of flat ginger ale.  When the ginger ale is allowed to go flat it resembles whiskey, and an impenetrable waiter serves it with proper ceremonies.  Isobel frequently was complimented on her ability to drink and remain sober. The fact is that she never touches whiskey, nor does she smoke.  The night club, of course, charges regular prices for “downs” and the profit goes to the proprietor.  It is only one of the many night club “gags” which Isobel learned.

Texas Guinan in fur and pearls.

Nightly the high-strung and dreaming Isobel had to listen to the love-making of those who frequent night clubs. There were college boys, with no money, spending a week’s allowance on a few quarts of gin and ordering ginger ale and ice to go with it.  There were out of town buyers—“butter and egg men,”—looking for companionship and entertainment.  There were “misunderstood” husbands, adventurers, fortune hunters.

“They all wanted one thing,” she said. “And that thing she was unwilling to give.  So I was fired from night club after night club.  But Tex Guinan’s was different. She was a real friend to me, and I appreciate her help.  Tex is real.”

Isobel had many troubles at the night clubs.  Occasionally men would attempt to trail her home.  In several instances they were successful and the situation became so acute that the girl had to seek police protection.

Isobel Stone on rowing home, The Spokesman Review September 24, 1928.

She appealed to the officer on the beat at the foot of Dyckman street, and he met her each morning when she returned from her night’s work, and escorted her to the end of the dock.  Here she essayed the extremely difficult job of paddling the boat out to the barge.  In evening dress, with high-heeled slippers, this presented a distinct problem, especially as she had only one ancient oar for the task.

Then came next to the last, and one of the most serious setbacks.  The long arm of the law stretched out and encircled Miss Guinan’s night club.  Isobel was frightened.  The rendezvous was not closed, but she was afraid of being involved in the toils of the law, and she gave up her job.

Isobel Stone, Brooklyn Eagle, August 4, 1928.

With no income, the girls were faced with a last staggering blow.  Their barge, the Nancy May, started settling slowly into the mud of the river bottom.  There was no mistaking the situation. The Nancy May was sinking.  Daily she was canted more and more over on her side, and daily the stagnant water rose in her hold.

Finally Isobel saw that they must move.  But where could they go?  Neither girl had the slightest idea. Thus the situation stood when a reporter for a New York newspaper wandered down to the foot of Dyckman street and started investigating things aboard the barge.

A few minutes later the story of Isobel and Margaret Stone trickled through an editorial room telephone.  Hardly had the type cooled in the forms of the New York paper before the story went leaping off into space, spread fanwise, and covered the country.  Immediately things started to happen, and they are still happening.  Offers of aid came from theatrical celebrities and from men and women who had known the Stone family in its days of affluence.

What will happen to Isobel and Margaret?  No one can definitely say that.  But again they are on the upgrade, and these girls, who were bounced by a mischievous fate from the lap of luxury into obscure poverty, may yet regain the heights.  But this time it will be through their own talents.”

So what became of the Stone sisters?

Some, including the girls’ own family, accused the sisters of staging a public spectacle to help launch lackluster careers.  A charge Isobel jokingly denied.

“I had no thought of a publicity stunt when we came to live here, but I’ll tell you frankly that if I can get any benefit out of that publicity, I am going to do so.” (The Evening Independent, July 21, 1928)

Half-bother Judge Steven Stone, who lived in Pittsburgh, told reporters that his siblings had only their “strong headedness” in pursuing artistic careers to blame for their impoverished condition.

“Any time they want to break away from this art business we will be tickled pink and will listen to them,” Judge Stone skeptically stated, before letting the reporter in on a family secret.  Steven Stone offered that he had sent money to his half-sisters from time to time and knew for a fact that they had real estate holdings in Manhattan. (The Evening Independent, July 21, 1928)

Isobel, however, denied her half-brother’s charges saying they had received no financial assistance whatsoever, “Our relatives sometimes ask us to lunch at the Ritz when they come to New York, but that’s really little help when you’re starving and can’t pay your rent.” (The Evening Independent, July 21, 1928)

But had the summer on the barge been but a stunt?

Perhaps.

New York Times, September 25,1928.

On September 25, 1928, an announcement appeared in the New York Times—“Poet Who Made Home on Leaky Barge to Wed Henry Harrison, Publisher.”

The article pointedly stated that the young couple planned on making their home in an old Colonial house on Barrow Street—supposedly purchased with the spoils of a bad investment that hadn’t turned out so badly after all.

Others were more direct in voicing their suspicions.

In mid-October of 1928, Allene Summer, in her syndicated column, The Woman’s Day, wrote:

“Romance is dead in this crass workaday world, we sometime say and hear. Have you read the story about Isobel Stone, daughter of former Governor of Pennsylvania William A. Stone?  Just a few weeks ago Isobel and her sister Peggy were discovered living in an abandoned barge anchored in a sedgy creek in upper New York.  They claimed that they were destitute, were trying to get a foothold in their respective arts of opera and sculpting, and that this life was necessary.

The other day Miss Stone’s engagement was announced to a New York publisher, and at the same time she explained that she and her sister had quit life on the leaky barge because some supposed valueless real estate had boomed and she had exchanged it for a $30,000 house in lower New York.

Romantic enough, if true.  That barge stunt did sound like two girls’ idea of a good time.  Who wouldn’t like living on a barge?”

Who indeed?

The Grub Street Book of Verse, edited by Henry Harrison.

Undaunted by skeptics, Isobel told the Times, “Although my art career is still uncertain, I am hopeful now of winning back my friends and the comforts to which I was accustomed.  I first met Mr. Harrison through a mutual friend, a poet, and when I submitted to Mr. Harrison my manuscript of poems under the title ‘Strange Canvases,’ one of which I wrote while living on the barge, he accepted it. Later I accepted him as my future husband.” (New York Times, September 25, 1928)

While the paper trail on Peggy appears to have gone cold, Isobel would indeed go on to marry Henry Harrison, a former editor of the Greenwich Village Quill and editor of The Grub Street Book of Verse.  Together, Isobel and her husband would collaborate on a number of literary projects throughout the 1930′s.

Isobel’s last mention in the newspapers came in 1947, when she was issued a summons for walking her leashed Irish terrier, Honeybear, on the boardwalk near her Coney Island home.  Again living near the water’s edge.

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 192nd Streets and Amsterdam Avenue.

Fort George Amusement Park in 1909

During its heyday this Gotham wonderland would boast two Ferris wheels, three roller coasters, nine saloons, a pony track, several hotels, a casino, five shooting galleries, a tunnel boat ride, two music halls called the Star and the Trocadero, fortune tellers and more frankfurters, peanuts and pretzels than you can imagine.

Fort George Amusement Park, 197th Street and Amsterdam, 1906.

Located at the end of the Third Avenue Trolley line, the park was a natural and popular destination for locals and residents throughout the city. While the children rode the massive Ferris wheel or took to the Toboggan slide adults could gamble the night away before renting a room in the Fort George Hotel and Casino to celebrate their winnings, or more likely, mourn their losses. There were even areas in the park where, for a fee, Mom and Dad could drop the kids off in a supervised playground setting, while they went off to enjoy “The Human Ostrich” or “The Cave of Winds.” Initially a loose and disorganized strip of sideshows the park became something truly spectacular under the leadership of Joseph Schenck (left) and his brother Nicholas. The brothers, Russian Jews who immigrated to New York from the ancient Slavic settlement of Rybinsk in 1893, first came to the park as curious visitors. Realizing the fortunes to be made they quickly invested in a beer hall called The Old Barrel.

The Old Barrel bar once located in Fort George.

It was in the Old Barrel that the Schnecks likely met another entrepreneur named Marcus Loew (right) , a park regular who had already amassed a small fortune with a string of theaters and penny arcades. (Loew would later become a Hollywood power-broker heading a theater chain that still bears his name.) Borrowing money from Loew, the brothers Schneck were soon able to open several thrill rides in an area of the park known as Paradise Park.

In a June, 1941  edition of Liberty Magazine, found by New York Wanderer Ben Feldman while rummaging around in a Tennessee junk shop, details of the early days of the park begin to emerge:

“One hot Saturday afternoon in 1905, Joe Schenck, then about twenty-six, took a trolley ride up to Fort George, the highest point on Manhattan Island. That was quite the thing to do in those days–ride to the end of the car line up there to cool off. When Joe arrived he found more than a thousand other New Yorkers strolling about enjoying the breezes. He noticed that there were a beer parlor or two, a couple of shooting galleries, and some tintype stands, and he quickly concluded that this was insufficient entertainment for all those people. He began to talk to some of them, inquiring if they would come up nights, as well as Sundays, if Fort George offered a dance hall, a merry go-round, and other attractions like those at Coney Island. Everybody he questioned said “You bet!” or words to that effect.

Joe took a lease on a small one-story building at Fort George that could be reached only through an alley. He constructed a cheap dance floor in the rear and turned the building into a saloon. He hired an orchestra and an unknown singer named Nora Bayes, put tables around the dance floor, and then waited. But the people just wouldn’t go through the alley, not even through a big sign that proclaimed: “Beer and Dancing in Rear.”

What would be most likely to entice the public? It was brother Nick who suggested that a picture would be better than printed words. Joe hired a man who painted scenes on mirrors behind the bars to make a garish-colored wooden cutout of a huge beer schooner with the foam on the amber contents. The schooner, lighted up at night, could be seen from a distance, and it drew the thirsty in droves. The result was that by summer’s end Joe Schenck had cleaned up several thousand dollars.

Fort George circa 1900.

Early in the spring of 1906 Joe and Nick began construction of what they called Paradise Park. On a Saturday afternoon in May, they were all set for the opening. They weren’t as enthusiastic as they might have been. After the merry-go-round and the other equipment had been installed, mostly on credit, they had realized, to their horror, that it would be necessary for the public to climb fifty-six steps to get to the park after leaving the trolley cars. They had been so engrossed in building the park on a high, cool spot that they had entirely overlooked that seeming drawback.

The brothers held their breath as the first of the Saturday-afternoon crowd began to spill out of their cars. When the visitors saw thhe amusements up there ahead of them, many were so eager that they took the fifty-six steps two at a time. The next day, Sunday, the same thing happened, and the Schencks knew that their fears about the steps had been unfounded. “And so,” Joe told me, “when we found the public didn’t mind the steps, we put a turnstile in–quick–right at the fifty-sixth step, and charged them ten cents admission. We hadn’t dared do that before.”

Fort George Amusement Park in 1911 postcard

Some New Yorkers had such fond feelings for the park that it became a popular spot for wedding proposals. In fact, in June of 1907 nineteen-year-old Susan Pierce and Raymond Barrett went so far as to tie the knot on the skating rink where they met. The bride, bridegroom and minister all donned roller skates for the nuptials.

It was a first for the park and likely a first for New York. After exchanging vows some 500 couples joined Susan and Raymond on the rink to skate to the popular “Love Me and the World is Mine,” before the happy couple skated off to Atlantic City for their honeymoon.

But as the years passed, neighborhood sentiment towards the park soured.

Initially a boon for the local economy, local residents and real estate developers grew tired of the noise, the drunken crowds and the crime that came to be associated with the park.

Then, on December 10th, 1911, an arsonist took public sentiment into his own hands and attempted to burn the park to the ground. According to news accounts high winds fanned the firebug’s torch destroying the Star Music Hall, the old Fort George Hotel, the dance hall of Paradise Park, a popular tavern and several smaller buildings. The damage, estimated at $25,000, could have been much worse if not for the daughter of truck farmer Nicholas Ceramer whose cries of “Papa, look at the fire,” allowed her father to sound the alarm. Ceramer emerged from his cottage across from the park just in time to “see a Man about 5 feet 9 inches tall, of stocky build, wearing a black hat and overcoat, run out of the lower floor of the music hall to the south. He gave chase, but failed to overtake the man.” Two years later, still healing from the scars of the arson attack the park suffered a fatal blow at the hands of another suspicious fire. On June 9th, 1913, a fire described as “the most spectacular ever seen,” engulfed the Fort George Amusement Park. At around two in the morning, Dominick Barnot, the night watchmen for Paradise Park saw that the dance hall was on fire. Barnot ran for help, but within ten minutes the fire, fueled by a strong westerly wind, had become an inferno. One-hundred foot flames seen as far south as 42nd Street were reported that night. Firemen and concerned volunteers descended on Fort George, but “the firemen quickly saw that it was their duty to save the property near by and let the park burn…One by one the play places were consumed. The roller coaster was quick to go, and then the Ferris wheel. And after the wheel the merry-go-rounds, the roller skating rink, and all the other things the Schneck Brothers had installed for the entertainment of the public.”

Fort George Amusement Park, 1900

Fort George Amusement Park circa 1900.

Down, but not defeated, the Schencks moved their act across the Hudson River, where they soon opened the wildly popular Palisades Park in New Jersey.

Fort George Amusement Park, 197th Street and Amsterdam, 1906.

And, while Paradise Park was never rebuilt, a generation would remember the glory days and smile knowing they had witnessed a now forgotten piece of New York history. Click here to read more Inwood history.

New York Times, September 16, 1904.

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 out of  Cuba in the late 1890’s for his role in a souvenir peso scheme. Now, surveying the open pastures, rail access and nearby waterways of Inwood, the P.T. Barnum side of Cobe instinctively kicked in.

The self appointed president of the newly formed Corporation Liquidating Company had recently made  a major acquisition.  In a move that likely caused Jan Dyckman to spin furiously in his  grave, Cobe, and his newly formed syndicate of private investors, bought all the property alongside the Spuyten Duyvil they could get their hands on.  The purchase included one of the Dyckman family’s ancestral homes.

Artists rendering of "Wonderland," New York Tribune September 13, 1904.

Now, as the chilly autumn winds bore down on shoreline, Cobe knew he could actually sell this idea.  A few plugs from the press couldn’t hurt either.

Coney Island's "Dreamland", 1905 designed by Kirby Petit and Green.

In an article published in the New York Tribune on September 13, 1904, one of  Cobe’s representatives first described the future Wonderland, “Kirby , Pettit & Green, who designed Dreamland (on Coney Island), are the architects.  Their preliminary drawings show a massive entrance, opening on a main concourse, which will stretch diagonally from end to end of the property.

New York Tribune detail of Wonderland.

This concourse will be 180 feet wide and 1,800 feet in length.  In the center of this boulevard will be a lagoon, bridged at convenient points. No two buildings will be alike, and every possible order of architecture will be introduced.  A variegated color scheme, introducing some brand new effects, is promised.

There will be a large open air amphitheatre for the production of a new fire fighting show on lines larger than have yet been attempted.  Then there will be a theatre for spectacles after the type of ‘The Storming of Port Arthur.’  A famous magician is to have his own theatre, with a stage which will make possible a new line of magic.  There will be gardens typical of different parts of the world, and several foreign villages.  An English tea garden on the banks of a miniature Thames, an old Italian town and an Alpine pass and village are among the features arranged.

1904 New York Tribune sketch of Wonderland.

An enormous swimming pool will be erected near the river front.  Part of it will be enclosed and the water kept at even temperatures, making bathing possible from May until the end of September, in water of the same temperature found in August.  Outside there will be a large pool in the open for use in the warmer months.  It is possible that the famous Sutro baths in San Francisco will be reproduced.”

Cobe expected to have the two million dollar project up and running by March of 1905, he explained in a November, 1904 New York Times article.  He also provided Times readers with more spectacular details on the park, which was, at the time, really just a just a cow pasture.

Cows grazing along the Spuyten Duyvil near turn of the century.

According to the Times, the park’s designers “have striven to make Wonderland a place very different from all other recreation parks, although the familiar ‘chutes’ will not be left out”.

Cobe’s description included not only rides, but enchanting foreign micro-cities so popular at world expositions.  “There are to be a German village, a Japanese village, a sixteenth century German castle and gaily colored pagodas.”

The old Dyckman mansion which Wonderland promoters planned on turning into a casino.

The article went on: “Within Wonderland’s boundaries is the old Dyckman mansion, which will be turned into a mammoth ballroom and casino. Between the mansion and the esplanade walk, where now is a thick grove of trees, will be gardens laid out with curving paths and rustic benches.  The natural characteristics of the grove will be interfered with as little as possible.”

In just a few short years the subway would reach Inwood and the park would become a goldmine.  That was the pitch anyway.  In the meantime workers would have all winter to build Wonderland from the ground up.

Winter wasn’t the ideal season to embark on a major construction project, but no one seemed to question Cobe’s judgment.

By the spring of 1905 Wonderland was still relatively undeveloped, but Cobe and new park director Thomas Riego Hart assured New Yorkers of a July 1^st opening.

Hart provided more tantalizing details on the layout of the park to a New York Herald reporter on April 2^nd.

“Wonderland”, the Herald scribe told readers, “will strive to be what its name implies.  It will embrace some of the leading features of Earls Court, in London; Willow Grove Park, in Philadelphia, and several of the successes which have made Luna Park and Dreamland, at Coney Island, famous.  In addition, it will have Italian gardens, lakes, Venetian canals and deep shaded rambles.”

The park would also now include, thirty-two different amusements, including “a reproduction of the storming and taking of 203 Metre Hill, at Port Arthur” to be directed by Bolossy Kiralfy.

1883 Kiralfy Brothers expo poster.

Beginning the 1880’s, the Hungarian born Brother’s Kiralfy dazzled world audiences with their theatrical extravaganzas involving a then primitive form of electricity.  They were especially renowned for their riverfront spectaculars—the bright lights dancing on the water’s surface.  Wonderland offered just such a backdrop.

Composer Walter Damroach was to be a headliner at the opening of Wonderland.

If the promoter’s claims were to be believed, the venue would also attract some of the most popular musicians of 1905.   “Wonderland”, the Herald reported,  “is scheduled to have Walter Damroach, if possible, open the season and to engage Sousa and Victor Herbert for some time in the summer.”

Six days after the Herald article, the real estate section of the New York Times announced: “Wonderland Sold for $1,000,000.”

1904 New York Tribune sketch of Wonderland.

According to the article, “The tract, which consists of nearly all the land included between Broadway, Two Hundred and Eighteenth Street and the Harlem Ship Canal, was bought last fall by Andrew J. Cobe from the Dyckman estate and has since been headed by Thomas Reigo Hart as the site for an amusement park. It is said that the purchase means that the amusement enterprise will be carried out.”

Despite such promising reports, the grand July 1^st opening never took place. Cows continued to graze where Venetian canals and Japanese gardens had been so excitedly promised just months before.

Amusement Park Abandoned, New York Times, Nov. 23, 1905.

In November of 1905, the death knell sounded on Wonderland.  Wrote the New York Times, “Andrew J. Cobe has sold, through David Stewart, a one half interest in the ‘Wonderland’ property at Broadway and the Harlem Ship Canal.  It was said yesterday that all projects had been abandoned for converting this property into an amusement park, and that it would be developed for resale.”

Wonderland had been but an illusion.

Columbia University Baker Field at 218th and Broadway, 1927.

In 1921, Columbia University, using money donated by Park Avenue banker George Fisher Baker, Jr., purchased the abandoned Wonderland site.  Today Columbia’s athletic center, including Baker Field, occupies what could have been the Coney Island of Northern Manhattan.

When Wonderland’s “wheeler dealer” promoter died in December of 1924, the Times noted his passing with two simple sentences, “Andrew J. Cobe, real estate and theatrical broker, with offices at 233 West Forty-second Street, died yesterday of heart disease at his residence, 76 West Eighty-sixth Street, age 59.  His wife, two sons, a daughter and two brothers survive.”

A bit of Inwood trivia: Jason, the owner of the Indian Road Cafe considered naming his establishment “Wonderland.”

Click here for more Inwood history.