Though no particular innovation can be credited to George Cornelius Tilyou, he probably did more than any other single figure to make Coney Island a unique place on earth. Born in New York City in 1862, Tilyou was three years old when he and his parents moved to Coney Island. His father, Peter Tilyou, soon opened Surf House, a beach rental and eating establishment, then went on to become a realtor. By 1876 young George thoroughly understood the way Coney Island worked: he sold cigar boxes full of authentic beach sand to Midwestern tourists, then used the proceeds to start up a stagecoach business between Nortons Point, where the steamer from Manhattan debarked, and Culver Plaza, where the well-to-do frolicked. George and his father went into business together in 1882, opening Surf Theater, the first theater in Coney Island, on an alley that ran between the pathways down to the sea. As various concessions sprouted around them, they laid planks over the alley, dubbed the Bowery, after the Manhattan street renowned for its theatrical attractions. The Bowery soon came to define the heart of Coney Island, and so it does today. When local politician John McKane went on trial for a multitude of abuses in 1887, George Tilyou was the sole witness who dared testify against him. As a result, the Tilyous were hounded out of the area. They were able to return with the conviction of McKane in 1894, however, and George was made a justice of the peace for his earlier bravery. Meanwhile, he had been to the Columbian Worlds Fair on his honeymoon with his bride Mary ODonnell. After seeing the Ferris Wheel there, Tilyou resolved to buy it, but it had already been earmarked for the upcoming St. Louis exposition, so he had to make do with building his own smaller version. The following season, on the heels of his Ferris Wheels success, he took inspiration from the neighboring Boytons Sea Lion Park and erected his own enclosed amusement park. As George Tilyous son Edward remarked a few years later, amusement parks provided a gigantic laboratory of human nature in which people cut loose from repressions and restrictions, and act pretty much as they feel like acting-since everyone else is doing the same thing. In Coneys permissive environment customers felt a giddy sense of irresponsibility.Among the most popular attractions, according to the younger Tilyou, were booths with imitation china dishes, objects to throw at them, and a sign: If you cant break up your own home, break up ours! Thus encouraged, Coney Island visitors exuberantly shed the roles of the larger world.Factory girls, Edward Tilyou noted, pretended they occupied loftier positions and played the parts of stenographers and private secretaries for a day; and a Brooklyn shop keeper would don her best clothes and act the part of a grande dame. More dramatically, a prim-looking schoolmaam, accustomed to curbing the childish excesses of others, surrendered to her own at Coney Island and walked fully dressed into the sea. It has been a hard year at school, she afterward explained, and when I saw the big crowd here, everyone with the brakes off, the spirit of the place got the better of me. In her impulse toward childish release, she was not alone. Most people, Edward Tilyou shrewdly observed, look back on childhood as the happiest period of their lives. They may be mistaken, but this is the mental attitude they like to adopt. The great strength of Steeplechase Park, known round the world for its trademark funny face logo, lay in its power to involve visitors. Many rides were calculated to play hob with gravity and so encourage couples to grab a hold of each other. In addition to the famous Steeplechase, which took its customers down a wavy track on mechanical horseback, the attractions included the Human Roulette Wheel, the Human Pool Table, the Whichway and the Barrel of Love, which spun humans in directions theyd never been spun in before. Equally involving was the Blowhole Theater--a stage built into an exit that forced customers to become actors, as they endured blasts of air and electric shocks to the delight of other recent victims. Steeplechase burned down in 1907, but Tilyou didnt miss a stride. After charging admission to the burning ruins, he rebuilt the park, this time introducing the roofed Pavilion of Fun. After Tilyou died in 1914, various managers took their turn running Steeplechase, although ownership remained in the family. The park finally closed in 1964, ending what amounted to a 69-year run of comic relief from the modern world.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 08:27:48 +0000
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