You're invited to join us for “Coney Island History Show & Tell,” an interactive reminiscence event presented by the Coney Island History Project via Zoom on March 25 and on April 8. Do you have paper ephemera or artifacts of historical or personal significance related to Coney Island history you would like to share? After registering for the event, sign up to “show and tell” your story by emailing events@coneyislandhistory.org. Listeners are welcome and will have an opportunity to ask questions via chat.

This new biweekly online event is hosted by Tricia Vita and Neter Antoine. Tricia has a certificate in reminiscence and life story work and creates and facilitates reminiscence activities for senior centers and records oral histories for the Coney Island History Project. Neter is a visual artist who is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Therapeutic Recreation at CUNY’s Lehman College. She is a 2020-2021 CUNY Cultural Corps intern with the Coney Island History Project.

Tickets for "Coney Island History Show & Tell" are free of charge. Advance registration is required and registration for each event is limited to 50 people. Due to capacity, we request that individuals register for one or the other of these two events. You will be sent the Zoom link two days before the event.

👉  Register via Eventbrite for Thursday, March 25 at 7:00PM - 8:00PM.

👉  Register via Eventbrite for Thursday, April 8 at 7:00PM - 8:00PM.

This program is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York City Councilman Mark Treyger.

Our new episode 'A Century of Bathhouses' has dropped! Listen and subscribe to Coney Island Stories on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 6 features stories of Washington Baths, Ravenhall, and Silver's Baths, among others, told by bathhouse owners, workers and patrons recorded for the Coney Island History Project’s oral history archive between 2000 and 2020. Bathhouses were the first businesses in Coney Island. Even before Coney’s first hotel was built in 1829, crude bathhouse shacks were set among the dunes. Before the city built the boardwalk in the 1920s, most of the Coney Island beach was private and bathhouses provided the only access to the beach and provided patrons a summer home away from home. Many had overnight accommodations, restaurants, and swimming pools, and some offered massages and the ever popular nude sunbathing.  They were very sociable places and generations of family and friends from the same neighborhoods patronized the same bath houses for years until the last one, Brighton Beach Baths, was demolished in the early 1990s. Now hardly anyone knows what a bathhouse is. 

Before Ruby Jacobs opened @RubysBarGrill he operated Coney Island bathhouses. In this 2000 #oralhistory his daughter Cindy describes those days. Listen via Ep 6 of @ConeyHistory's #ConeyIslandStories #podcast available on Apple, Spotify, Google and more! https://t.co/8a8SytWQMe pic.twitter.com/gl0I32Smul

— Coney Island History (@ConeyHistory) March 15, 2021

You're invited to join us on Zoom for "Mermaid Avenue, Then and Now," a virtual tour with historian Charles Denson, director of the Coney Island History Project, on February 23rd.

We'll look at how Coney Island's Mermaid Avenue shopping district, where most of the storefronts were in three-story brick buildings constructed in the 1920s, was transformed by a destructive urban renewal project launched in 1949. Today the "Avenue," as residents called it, is recovering but remains a shadow of its former self. Denson grew up a block from Mermaid Avenue and will show his photo documentation of the street as it changed during the 1960s and 1970s, and as it appears today. 

The Coney Island History Project also invites anyone with Mermaid Avenue stories to sign up to record an oral history about their experiences on Coney’s famous Avenue. Some of the oral histories in our archive about Mermaid Avenue’s mom and pop businesses founded by immigrants past and present are featured in Episode 4 of our Coney Island Stories podcast.

Charles Denson grew up in Coney Island and began documenting his neighborhood as a boy, a passion that continues to this day. He is the author of four books: Coney Island's Wonder Wheel Park; Wild Ride: A Coney Island Roller Coaster Family; Coney Island and Astroland; and Coney Island: Lost and Found, named 2002 New York Book of the Year by the New York Society Library. 

Tuesday, February 23 at 7:00 PM. FREE.
Advance registration is required. You will be sent the Zoom link two days before the event.

This program is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York City Councilman Mark Treyger.

Our new episode on legendary roller coasters has dropped! Listen and subscribe to Coney Island Stories on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 5 of our Coney Island Stories podcast features the stories of a trio of roller coasters built in the Roaring 20’s and named after violent storms: the Thunderbolt, the Tornado and the Cyclone.

While the Cyclone is the only survivor from Coney's golden age, the Coney Island History Project has recorded and preserved memories of people who rode or worked at some of these legendary coasters. A few narrators had the unusual fortune to live beneath one of these thrill rides. The stories of Harold Kramer, Mae Timpano, Don Ferris, Andy Badalamenti, Mindy Gress, and John Hunt, among others, were recorded for the Coney Island History Project Oral History Archive between 2000 and 2020.

Built in 1926, #ConeyIsland's Tornado #rollercoaster had rides, concessions, and even an apartment beneath the tracks 🎢 Listen to Ep 5 of our #ConeyIslandStories #podcast https://t.co/XH42ikL18Z pic.twitter.com/Zo0VD1MT7S

— Coney Island History (@ConeyHistory) February 11, 2021