Friday, April 15, 2011

Freedomland, July 1962 - Part One

It's been a while since we've visited New York's Freedomland (the east coast rival to Disneyland, located in the north Bronx area). I'll have three posts consisting of a small group of slides that I found recently. There's nothing extraordinary, but it's always nice to take a look around this park that only lasted four years before closing.


Here's a photo of the Old Chicago Train Station; of the three stations (one in San Francisco, and one in Little Old New York), this one seems to be the least photographed for some reason. The statues surrounding the flagpole are an interesting touch. To the extreme right is the Fire House, and just in front of it is a sign announcing the next performance of the Chicago Fire attraction.


Walt Disney tried having a circus at Disneyland, and the idea was one of the early failures at the park. I wonder if the George Hamid, Jr. Circus at Freedomland fared any better? To the extreme left is a chintzy bandstand (for lack of a better word) for the Freedomland Circus Band.


I like signage, and you don't see much from Freedomland... check out this example for the American Express Overland Stage (and see some photos of it here and here)! Like Disneyland, Freedomland's Stage Coach keeled over at least once, injuring a number of guests.


Look out for part two of this series - comin' atcha!

2 comments:

TokyoMagic! said...

I like that first photo, Major. It almost looks like it could have been taken at a Disney park....or Michael Jackson's Neverland.

Pilsner Panther said...

There's a very sound reason (an economic one) why Walt Disney built his parks in California and Florida. You need a very long warm season and no severe winters to make a financial success of any enterprise like that. New York just wasn't the place, and Walt certainly knew it. That's why Freedomland was a failure.