Fire
Steeplechase burned during the 1907 season, destroying most of the park. The morning after the fire Tilyou posted a sign outside the park. It read:
To enquiring friends: I have troubles today that I had not yesterday. I had troubles yesterday which I have not today. On this site will be built a bigger, better, Steeplechase Park. Admission to the burning ruins -- Ten cents.
The park was rebuilt for the 1908 season, although the new park was not fully open until 1909. It now included a "Pavilion of Fun" in an indoor enclosure covered by steel and glass that covered 5 acres (20,000 m2). Steeplechase burned again in less-destructive incidents in 1936 and 1939.
Three years after the park fully reopened, Tilyou died, leaving the care of the park to his children, who continued to operate it for the next fifty years.
Read more about this topic: Steeplechase Park
Famous quotes containing the word fire:
“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And where two raging fires meet together;
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.
Though little fire grows great with little wind,
Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)