Happy Holidays from the Coney Island History Project!

Happy Holidays from the Coney Island History Project! As 2025 comes to a close, we're grateful for our friends and supporters.

Highlights from this year include:

• Introducing our new Wonder Gallery with two new exhibits: Coney Island Streets: 1965–1975 - Photos by Charles Denson and Brooklyn Wilds: Cyanotypes and Poetry by Amanda Deutch. The exhibits combined street photography, cyanotypes, native plants, and poetry to explore the natural and urban sides of Coney Island that are not well known.

• Displaying "Cy," the Spook-A-Rama Cyclops from Deno's Wonder Wheel Park, and Coney Island's only original Steeplechase horse from the legendary ride that gave Steeplechase Park its name. Visitors were invited to take free souvenir photos and selfies with these artifacts.

• Presenting outdoor exhibits at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, including an installation of history panels in front of the Astroland Moon Rocket and history banners adjacent to the Wheel and below the Phoenix Roller Coaster. Visitors were invited to sit inside the rocket and view the film, "The Rocket Has Landed," a documentary about saving the rocket after Sandy and moving it from Staten Island to Deno's Wonder Wheel Park. The rocket also received a fresh new coat of paint, bringing back its original colors.

• Recording new oral histories for our multilingual online archive, which has over 500 interviews with people who have lived or worked in Coney Island and nearby neighborhoods of Southern Brooklyn or have a special connection to these places.

• Acting as an information center for multitudes of visitors to Coney Island.

• Contributing social media and blog posts alerting the community about the dangers of the proposed Coney Island casino.

Our successful and productive season was dampened by the specter of an ill-conceived Coney Island casino. The project’s developers thought they could fool Coney Island fans, residents, and local elected officials with their lies, pandering, misinformation, and outright bribery. The sickening display of ignorance and arrogance on the part of the developers finally fizzled out when a majority of Community Advisory Committee members soundly rejected the casino plan. Many thanks to the amazingly diverse and determined coalition of opponents who came together to get the word out, fight it, and defeat it. Now on to the next chapter!

Your donation or membership today will help support our 501(c)(3) nonprofit's free exhibits, oral history archive, and community programming as we enter our 22nd year. We’re counting the days until we meet again in Coney Island for the 2026 season.

Charles Denson, Executive Director