A Brooklyn native's boyhood memories of Washington Baths and Steeplechase Park
Jan Brown grew up in Brooklyn where his family spent summers at Washington Baths in Coney Island. His parents, who had met at Washington Baths, played handball and his father was a professional model and bodybuilder. Brown describes the atmosphere...
Content type: Oral History Item
Daughter of Coney Island artist, banner painter and Cyclops creator Dan Casola
Patricia Casola shares memories of growing up in Coney Island in the 1950s and '60s as the daughter of artist Dan Casola (1902-1990). She recalls her father as a "tinkerer" and "a self-taught individual" who learned by doing. Among his clients were...
Content type: Oral History Item
Son of Coney Island artist, banner painter and Cyclops creator Dan Casola
Wesley Casola shares memories of growing up in Coney Island in the 1950s and '60s. The son of artist Dan Casola (1902-1990), he recalls his father building the Spook-A-Rama Cyclops in their yard and making figures for The World in Wax Musee. His...
Content type: Oral History Item
Girlhood memories of growing up on West 5th Street in Coney Island before being displaced by Warbasse
Sisters Gladys Sandman and Lucille daCosta, née Salvia, share girlhood memories of growing up on Coney Island's West 5th Street in the 1950s and the beginning of the '60s. Their grandparents were homeowners on West 5th and their mother and father ...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of growing up in Coney Island during the Great Depression and 55 years practicing law
Charles Berkman, who was 88 when this interview was recorded and turned 90 on July 2, 2018, grew up on West 29th Street in Coney Island during the Great Depression. The youngest of nine children of a hard-working orphan immigrant from Poland,...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of going to Steeplechase Park as a teenager in the 1950s
Visiting the Coney Island History Project and seeing an original Steeplechase horse brings back vivid memories for Rosalie Diamond of coming to Coney Island as a teen in the 1950s. She recalls the clowns at Steeplechase, riding the Parachute Jump,...
Content type: Oral History Item
A five-year-old describes her visit to Coney Island
At 63 seconds, this is the shortest oral history in our archive and one of the youngest narrators. Five-year-old Rebecca Diamond, who was visiting with her family, including her grandmother Rosalie Diamond, tells us her favorite rides in Coney...
Content type: Oral History Item
Actor and playwright whose new play A Lonely Night in Coney Island is set on the Boardwalk
Actor and playwright Mohammed Saad Ali's new play A Lonely Night in Coney Island is being produced by Bensonhurst's Genesis Repertory on April 28 as part of the Rise of the Phoenix Festival in the East Village. Set on the Coney Island Boardwalk and...
Content type: Oral History Item
The founder of the Dark Ride Project on documenting Spook-A-Rama and other historic dark rides
Joel Zika is a multimedia artist, a lecturer in Creative Arts at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and the creator of the Dark Ride Project. Using a Virtual Reality 360- degree video camera, his mission is to document the dwindling number...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of growing up on West 33rd Street in Coney Island and working on the Boardwalk in the 1960s
Al Burgo, who grew up in Gravesend Houses in Coney Island's West End, shares memories of street games and streetwise hijinks in the 1960s. As a boy, he earned 15 cents per shine while apprenticing with a shoe shine pro on the Boardwalk, an...
Content type: Oral History Item