50 years ago: Remembering old Coney Island
With the news that Coney Island will close permanently at the end of the year, we're republishing this story, which first ran in 2021.
Old Coney Island closed down 50 years ago at the end of the 1971 season.
“America’s Favorite Amusement Park” had operated for 85 seasons, weathered frequent flooding and survived the devastating loss of its famous steamboat, the Island Queen, not once but twice.
The new owners at that time, Cincinnati-based Taft Broadcasting Co., chose to close Coney down and build a brand-new park 30 miles north near Mason – to be named Kings Island in reference to Coney Island.
Many of the midway-style rides were transported up I-71 to the new park in the fittingly named Coney Island section (now Coney Mall).
“Coney’s been a grand old lady and a real institution,” Coney Island president Ralph Wachs said at the time. “She will continue to live, at least in part, at the new Kings Island Park.”
Before Coney’s gates were closed on Sept. 6, 1971, visitors had one last season to say goodbye. One more ride on the Shooting Star, one more dance at Moonlite Gardens, one more fireworks show.
Enquirer theater critic Tom McElfresh wrote a poetic epitaph:
“Coney Island. What wonders the name invokes. For a child. What garish, gaudy, boundless, nameless pleasures. The delights that coursed through Kubla Khan on contemplation of that stately pleasure dome in Xanadu pale in the light of one kid’s smile at mention of the magic name: Coney.”
The gates wouldn’t stay closed long. Sunlite Pool stayed open, and three years later, old Coney found new life as a park. But it wasn’t the same. In 1991, Coney was reborn as a quaint family amusement park but without the thrill rides of its cousin. The charm of old Coney Island was a thing of the past.
Parker’s Grove to Ohio Grove
The park began as an apple orchard. In 1867, James Bell Parker purchased a 20-acre spread along the Ohio River, 10 miles east of Cincinnati. Neighbors asked permission to have Sunday picnics to watch the steamboats, and Parker’s Grove became known as one of the best picnic spots around. Parker soon added a shelter, dance hall, bowling alleys and a mule-driven merry-go-round.
Then, two enterprising steamboat captains, William F. McIntyre and Jacob D. Hegler, bought the grove to create a destination resort for their passengers. Ohio Grove opened June 21, 1886, advertised as “the New Coney Island of the West” in reference to the famed amusement park in Brooklyn. Right away, though, everyone just called it Coney Island.
Each new owner brought grander ideas. The artificial Lake Como, named for the famous lake in Italy, featured gondolas. Shoot the Chutes launched a boat down a ramp that skipped across the water. The park’s first roller coaster, the Hegler Coaster, invented by Coney’s co-owner, required men to push the car to the top of a hill, then let gravity take over.
This was a time when visitors dressed in Victorian clothes. Women wore white dresses, men wore suits and ties and hats, even on the rides. And they all arrived in style.
In 1896, Coney owner Lee Brooks commissioned a custom steamboat, the Island Queen, a “floating palace” that ferried guests from Cincinnati’s Public Landing to the shores at Coney. Passengers embarked on an hour-long voyage upstream, a trip possibly more memorable than the day spent at Coney, then returned by starlight.
The Island Queen caught fire at the Public Landing on Nov. 4, 1922, but insurance was insufficient to rebuild and Brooks had to sell the park.
Sunlite Pool, Moonlite Gardens
New owners Rudolph Hynicka, who had been one of Boss George B. Cox’s political lieutenants, and George F. Schott poured in a lot of money to amp up the park, adding most of what is remembered today about old Coney.
They had a new Island Queen constructed, even grander than the original. They opened the Moonlite Gardens dance hall, known to generations of courting couples, and converted the midway into a grassy mall with new rides: the Wildcat, Twister and Clipper roller coasters, the Cascades (later the Lost River) and Bluebeard’s Castle.
Then there was Sunlite Pool, the largest circulating swimming pool in the world, 401 feet long by 200 feet wide, holding 3.5 million gallons of water. It opened May 22, 1925, and remains Coney Island’s signature attraction today.
The 1920s through ’50s was Coney’s heyday. Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra played Moonlite Gardens. The Land of Oz kiddieland gave youngsters their own playground. The Clipper was reworked as the Shooting Star, the popular antecedent to Kings Island’s Beast.
Coney survived the 1937 flood and the polio pandemic in the 1950s that nearly shut down Sunlite Pool. But the real tragedy was when the Island Queen burned at a Pittsburgh wharf Sept. 9, 1947. A welder’s torch caught the oil aflame and the explosion killed 19 and wounded 18.
“If there ever was a day that marked the end of an era in Cincinnati ... it was the day the Island Queen died,” The Enquirer’s Owen Findsen wrote 50 years later. “… The boat was what made Cincinnati summers special.”
The end of summer
Walt Disney visited Coney Island in 1953 to get ideas for Disneyland. He was impressed by the park’s cleanliness and landscaping, as well as the model of the late Island Queen.
But not all was bright at Coney. Flooding meant more money spent on cleaning and restoring the property every year.
The real stain on Coney Island was excluding Black patrons. It wasn’t the only place in Cincinnati that was slow to integrate, but the fight to desegregate Coney was the most public.
In 1952, civil rights activities Marian Spencer, Virginia Coffey and others boycotted Coney Island and laid down in front the gates to pressure owners to change its policy. When Coney’s license was up for renewal, City Councilman Theodore Berry objected to the city safety director, and Coney president Edward Schott finally relented. African Americans were allowed into Coney Island for the first time in 1955, but it took another six years to integrate Sunlite Pool.
In the late 1960s, Taft Broadcasting was looking for an amusement park to promote their Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, and Coney was looking to move from their flood-prone location. Taft purchased Coney for $6.5 million in stock and announced it would close the park and build the $20 million Kings Island.
Grand Carousel, Skyride, Log Flume and other rides were moved to the new park, but Kings Island officials elected to build the new dual-track Racer, so the Shooting Star was torn down.
Three years after closing, Taft reopened old Coney as a park with tennis courts and paddle boats. Moonlite Gardens and Sunlite Pool also remained. Riverbend Music Center opened there in 1984. Ronald F. Walker bought the park in 1991 and returned the carnival rides. Then, in 2019, operators sold off all the rides to focus on Sunlite Pool and a water park.
Another stage in Coney Island’s history ended as another begins.
Sources: Enquirer archives, “Cincinnati’s Coney Island” by Charles J. Jacques Jr.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 50 years ago: Remembering Cincinnati’s old Coney Island
