Uploaded April 2009 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Released June 29, 1905
Edison Manufacturing Co.
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
An excerpt from the four minute short ''Coney Island by Night.''
''Beside the million incandescent lamps which make the enclosure at nighttime the brightest spot on the whole terrestrial sphere, there is the Kaleidoscope Tower where 80,000 electric lights go through as many changes every second. These lights take the form of fifty different geometrical effects, which in turn go through 1,100 changes before they repeat. The tower is the only thing of its kind in existence, and is in many ways the most extraordinary electrical display ever made.''
- Luna Park souvenir program (Library of Congress)
''I have built Luna Park on a definite architectural plan, I have eliminated all classic, conventional forms in its structure, and taken a sort of free Renaissance and Oriental type for my model, using spires and minarets whenever I could. . . . . It is marvelous what you could do in the way of arousing human emotions by the use that you make, architecturally, of simple lines! Luna Park is built on that theory, and the result has proved the theory's truth.''
- Fred Thompson
"Do you know," he said, "I am deeply fascinated by all these toys. For, of course, you perceive that they are really enlarged toys. They reinforce me in my old opinion that humanity only needs to be provided for ten minutes with a few whirligigs and things of the sort, and it can forget at least four centuries of misery. I rejoice in these whirligigs," continued the stranger, eloquently, "and as I watch here and there a person going around and around or up and down, or over and over, I say to myself that whirligigs must be made in heaven.
-excerpt from 'Coney Island's Failing Days' by Stephen Crane
To visit Luna Park in broad daylight take a trip with Rube and Mandy: youtube.com/watch?v=3q7TI9ud6ro
Recommended reading:
The Kid of Coney Island / Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements
- Woody Register
Coney Island / The People's Playground
- Michael Immerso
01/01/12 - 7,518
Released June 29, 1905
Edison Manufacturing Co.
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
An excerpt from the four minute short ''Coney Island by Night.''
''Beside the million incandescent lamps which make the enclosure at nighttime the brightest spot on the whole terrestrial sphere, there is the Kaleidoscope Tower where 80,000 electric lights go through as many changes every second. These lights take the form of fifty different geometrical effects, which in turn go through 1,100 changes before they repeat. The tower is the only thing of its kind in existence, and is in many ways the most extraordinary electrical display ever made.''
- Luna Park souvenir program (Library of Congress)
''I have built Luna Park on a definite architectural plan, I have eliminated all classic, conventional forms in its structure, and taken a sort of free Renaissance and Oriental type for my model, using spires and minarets whenever I could. . . . . It is marvelous what you could do in the way of arousing human emotions by the use that you make, architecturally, of simple lines! Luna Park is built on that theory, and the result has proved the theory's truth.''
- Fred Thompson
"Do you know," he said, "I am deeply fascinated by all these toys. For, of course, you perceive that they are really enlarged toys. They reinforce me in my old opinion that humanity only needs to be provided for ten minutes with a few whirligigs and things of the sort, and it can forget at least four centuries of misery. I rejoice in these whirligigs," continued the stranger, eloquently, "and as I watch here and there a person going around and around or up and down, or over and over, I say to myself that whirligigs must be made in heaven.
-excerpt from 'Coney Island's Failing Days' by Stephen Crane
To visit Luna Park in broad daylight take a trip with Rube and Mandy: youtube.com/watch?v=3q7TI9ud6ro
Recommended reading:
The Kid of Coney Island / Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements
- Woody Register
Coney Island / The People's Playground
- Michael Immerso
01/01/12 - 7,518
