Longtime Coney Island resident Pamela Pettyjohn is president of the Coney Island Beautification Project, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization based in Coney Island. The organization was formed to encourage community involvement and...
Content type: Oral History Item
This interview was conducted and recorded in Russian. Read Julia Kanin's transcript and translation below. Интервью проведено и записано на русском языке. Вы можете ознакомиться с траснскриптом и переводом Юлии Ханиной ниже.
Artist Leonid Alaverdov...
Content type: Oral History Item
Born and raised in Coney Island, Maria Navarro says her family came here from Morovis, Puerto Rico in 1957 and lived on West 36th, 27th, 21st, 28th and 29th Streets before settling in Gravesend Houses in 1970. "Everybody knows each other," says...
Content type: Oral History Item
In 1954, Lois McLohon posed for a Daily News photographer as a bathing beauty against the backdrop of Coney Island beach and its famous skyline. When the photo appeared as a "cheesecake photo" in the paper's centerfold, she and her friends thought...
Content type: Oral History Item
Born in 1942 and raised in Coney Island, Native American artist Richard Glazer-Danay is of Kahnawake (Caughnawaga) Mohawk and Jewish descent. His family first came to Coney Island with circuses and Wild West shows in the late 1800's and early 1900's...
Content type: Oral History Item
Wilensky Hardware on Mermaid Avenue is an anchor of the community and the oldest family-owned business in Coney Island. The store survived a century of urban renewal, arson, hurricanes, crime waves, and the civic neglect that led to the closing of...
Content type: Oral History Item
Steve Campanella is the owner of what's known as "The Bensonhurst Statue House" on 85th Street in Brooklyn. The private home is locally famous for his collection of "life size personalities" outside as well as collectibles inside the home and...
Content type: Oral History Item
This interview was conducted and recorded in Russian. Read Julia Kanin's transcript and translation below. Интервью проведено и записано на русском языке. Вы можете ознакомиться с траснскриптом и переводом Юлии Ханиной ниже.
Father Maxim Pliskov is...
Content type: Oral History Item
Watercolor artist Frederick Brosen is a native New Yorker whose boyhood memories include Steeplechase's revolving barrel at the park's entrance, wooden slide, and horse race ride. As a father, he rediscovered the joy of Coney Island through a...
Content type: Oral History Item
Born and raised in Astoria, Queens, Chris Cuomo, 78, shares memories of going to Steeplechase Park in the late 1940's and early '50s. "Every summer, my mom would take us and half the neighborhood down on the train to Coney Island, and she'd pack a...
Content type: Oral History Item