Steeplechase Park - Downfall and Closure

Downfall and Closure

The demise of Steeplechase was multilayered one. Despite the park's popularity with New Yorkers, many factors after the end of World War II would eventually lead to its closure.

Steeplechase was Coney Island's longest lasting park. Unlike its rivals, Dreamland (1904–1911) which burned in a fire, and Luna Park (1903–1946) which, despite early success, saw its profitability disappear during the Great Depression, Steeplechase had kept itself financially profitable. The Tilyou family had been able to adapt the park to the changing times, bringing in new rides and new amusements to Steeplechase such as the Parachute Jump. Luna Park, which had provided Steeplechase which much needed competition, was heavily damaged by a pair of fires in 1944, leading to its closure in 1946. This left Steeplechase as the only major amusement park in Coney, along with smaller privately owned rides and amusements. Luna's demise was an ominous turning point in Coney Island, in that it decreased the amusement area by half. This led to a renewed interest in Coney by city developers, who during the 1950s bulldozed what was left of Luna and rezoned it for residential development.

New York master building planner Robert Moses had always been a vocal critic of Coney Island, likening the crowds that flocked there during the summer months to the crowds of New Yorkers that flooded the city's tenement houses. Moses had since the 1930s tried to redevelop the island into serene park land. To prevent the proliferation of the amusement area, he had the New York Aquarium relocate to the old Dreamland site in 1957. In the late 1940s Moses would take on the title of city housing commissioner. He targeted Coney for redevelopment by building a series of high-rise low-income housing developments in the late 1950s. This decimated the Coney Island neighborhood around Steeplechase and the remaining amusements. The relocation of many low-income families to Coney eventually led to a sharp increase of crime in the area. By the early 1960s patrons of Steeplechase began avoiding the area, preferring to go to parks in safer areas such as Rockaway Playland in Rockaway Beach and Rye Playland in Rye, New York.

Suburbia would also hasten Steeplechase's demise. The exodus of middle-class Brooklynites to suburban developments in Queens, Long Island, and Staten Island drove more people away from Coney. Private houses, along with the rise of private pools and home air conditioning, decreased the need for people to flock to the beach in the summer months. The rise in private automobiles also allowed families to travel to more desirable beach-side resorts on Long Island and on the Jersey Shore. Additionally, the rise and popularity of suburban shopping malls, which made high-end department store shopping more accessible to suburbanites, would lure more and more people away from Coney and other beach-side resorts.

Despite these drawbacks, Steeplechase still had significant patronage to keep the park profitable. In 1962, Astroland Park would open up next to Steeplechase, consolidating a number of private smaller rides and amusements. It would anchor the amusement area on the east end of the island, which, in essence, benefited Steeplechase by keeping the area zoned for amusements. Nevertheless, the children of George C. Tilyou, who continued to run the park after his death, began themselves to grow old by the early sixties. Concerned about how much longer the park could remain profitable, and realizing that the surrounding neighborhood was steadily deteriorating, Tilyou's daughter Marie (the park's majority stockholder) decided to sell Steeplechase and the family's other Coney Island property holdings, despite the protest of her siblings. Steeplechase closed, for what ultimately proved to be for good, on September 20, 1964. Marie Tilyou sold the park to real estate developer Fred Trump (father of Donald Trump) in February 1965. Prior to the sale, there were bids by Astroland owner Dewey Albert and the Handwerker family, owner of Nathan's Famous, along with the owners of many of the island's independent rides, to buy Steeplechase and keep it open; however, Marie Tilyou declined the offers. Many of the ride owners, along with the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce, felt the sale to Trump was preferable, to garner more money for the Tilyou family once the site was developed for housing. Despite the sale, it was thought that Steeplechase would remain in operation until Trump could obtain the zoning variances that would allow him to redevelop the Steeplechase site for residential development. Trump, however, would not reopen the park for the 1965 season, and Steeplechase would sit empty for the next two years before being bulldozed in 1966.

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