Memories of growing up in the newly opened Luna Park Houses in the 1960s and 1970s
Kathy Fenyves and her family were original tenants of Luna Park Houses' Building 5 with an apartment that looked out on the amusement park. She lived there from 1961, when she was a toddler, until she was 23, and her parents continued to live there...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of living in Luna Park Houses and going to Coney Island bathhouses in the 1960s
Karen Wilcox and her family were among the original tenants of Luna Park Houses, moving there from the East New York section of Brooklyn in 1962. "We were the first family to live in Apt 15M in Building 4," says Wilcox, who was 11 at the time. "Then...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of Coney Island in the 1950s and a family's candy factory on Mermaid Avenue
Liz Unger was born in Brooklyn in 1944 and divided her time growing up between Baltimore, Maryland, and Coney Island. She spent every summer and every holiday staying with her aunt and grandmother, who lived on West 30th Street. Another aunt, uncle...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of living in Coney Island from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s
Born in 1940, Jerry Omanoff lived in Coney Island from the late 1940s to the mid-60s. His family lived first in a bungalow on West 32nd Street, then in an apartment in a three-story house on West 33rd Street, and finally in Sea Gate. He shares...
Content type: Oral History Item
Mystery artist who carved faces into rocks on the shoreline at Brighton Beach
John Philip Capello is a painter and sculptor who grew up in Bensonhurst in the 1940s and '50s and now lives in Sag Harbor. This oral history is the culmination of the interviewer's 12 year search for the mystery artist who carved faces into rocks...
Content type: Oral History Item
Rachel Simon recalls her family's Deli Restaurant on Mermaid Avenue
Rachel Rosenberg Simon's grandparents owned and operated Rosenberg's Kosher Deli Restaurant on Mermaid Avenue from 1917 to 1975. It was considered the finest deli on the Avenue as all the food in the restaurant was homemade. Rachel's entire family...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of living in Luna Park Houses in the 1960s and again in the late 1970s
Eric Schwelke's maternal and paternal grandparents settled in Coney Island in the first decades of the 20th century and his mother Frieda Schwelke grew up on West 29th and West 32nd Street. Born in 1952, Schwelke's earliest memories of Coney Island...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of growing up in Coney Island in the 1930s and '40s and moving to Luna Park Houses in 1962
Born in 1930 in Coney Island, Frieda Schwelke and her family lived on West 36th, West 29th, and West 32nd Streets. In February 1962, she moved with her husband and son to Luna Park Houses when it first opened, and lived there through 1970. Schwelke...
Content type: Oral History Item
Bus driver for 35 years on the B36 route and the shuttle bus inside Sea Gate
Born in 1953, Fred Stern recalls growing up on West 32nd Street in Coney Island, in a house next to Sam's Knishes, and going to the beach and spookhouses in the amusement area. In 1964, his family moved to neighboring Bath Beach, where he still...
Content type: Oral History Item
Lifelong Brighton Beach resident shares stories of Brighton Beach then and now
Born in New York City in 1954, Amparo Garcia has lived in Brighton Beach all her life. Her parents emigrated from Spain in 1949 and because her father loved the beaches of his native Cádiz, he decided the place to live in New York was Brighton Beach...
Content type: Oral History Item