Artist and Coney Island resident recalls growing up on Mermaid Avenue above Carolina Restaurant
Artist Johanna Gargiulo Sherman grew up in Coney Island, where her family lived on Mermaid Avenue in a cold water flat above Carolina Restaurant. Her father Joe "Carolina" Gargiulo led a musical trio and was one of the partners in this popular ...
Content type: Oral History Item
Granddaughter of Anthony "Totonno" Pero tells the story of how he founded Totonno's Pizzeria in 1924
Antoinette Balzano is the granddaughter of Totonno's founder, Anthony Pero. At Totonno’s Pizzeria Napolitana on Neptune Avenue in Coney Island, pizzas have been made in the same way in the same spot since 1924. Anthony (Totonno) Pero, emigrated from...
Content type: Oral History Item
Girlhood memories of summering in a Coney Island bungalow in the 1950s
On her first day back to Coney Island since 1959, Kathy Duke O'Melia shares memories of joyful summers spent with her family at a bungalow colony in Coney Island. Located on West 31st Street near Coney Island Creek, the bungalows provided an...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of Coney Island in the 1930s and '40s and growing up in Brooklyn in an Italian family
Commendatore Aldo Mancusi, the founder of the Enrico Caruso Museum of America, brings his Hofbauer street organ from the museum to our annual Coney Island History Day celebrations. Born in 1929, Mancusi shares his memories of coming to Coney Island...
Content type: Oral History Item
A family tradition of raising and racing homing pigeons in Coney Island
For Anthony Martire, owner of Larry's Auto Radiator Shop on Neptune Avenue, the pigeon coops on his roof are a family tradition. His father, who was born and raised on 16th Street in Coney Island, began raising and racing homing pigeons in 1947. He...
Content type: Oral History Item
Louise Milano's mother, Carolina, operated Carolina Restaurant on Mermaid Avenue for 60 years
Founded in 1928, Carolina Restaurant on Mermaid Avenue was a fixture for over 60 years. Carolina, known as Carrie, prepared traditional home style cooking that remains memorable to generations of Coney Island residents. Carrie's daughter Louise and...
Content type: Oral History Item
Mother and son remember the Laughing Lady at Coney's Magic Carpet Fun House
Taty Alicea and her son Ralph Alicea share fond memories of Coney Island's famous Laughing Lady, a popular mechanical attraction that was part of the Magic Carpet Fun House and is greatly missed. "Wherever Matilda is, she's not home," says Ralph....
Content type: Oral History Item
Mary Hood came to Coney Island as a child and worked on the Bowery well into her 90s
95-year-old Mary Hood (a.k.a. Mary Fish) was a regular at the bar at Peggy O'Neill's. She was either working long hours as a ticket taker at the Eldorado Skooter or she was drinking into the wee hours. It was hard to pin her down or to keep up with...
Content type: Oral History Item
The story behind the Boardwalk Lido Restaurant and the family who operated it from 1927 until 1960
Steve Arniotes and his family operated the Lido Restaurant and Bar on the Coney Island Boardwalk from 1927 until 1960. Steve and his brother were lawyers and both became judges. Arniotes describes his family roots and what it was like to operate a...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of a Yiddish literary household in 1940's and 1950's Coney Island and Sea Gate
Eva Zucker grew up in Coney and Sea Gate in the 1940s and 1950s in a literary household. Yiddish was her first language. She recounts memories of her father, the Yiddish poet A. Lutzky, who made a living writing Saturday poems for the newspaper Der...
Content type: Oral History Item