Coney Island at Night (1905)

It’s that time of year when I start planning my annual visit to Coney Island. My kids will be 6 soon and, for the first time, they will be old enough for a late afternoon/evening visit. I love Coney Island at night, the weather is just a little bit cooler, the crowd just a little bit more joyful. It’s fun to imagine what it was like to be there at night 120 or so years ago when electrical displays were still rare and dazzling. The Public Domain Review posted about the short film Coney Island at Night (1905), which was made my Edison Studios:

It’s these illuminations which are the subject of Coney Island at Night, an Edison Studios short from 1905 directed by Edwin S. Porter. Bringing together two of Thomas Edison’s “inventions”, the light bulb and the motion picture, the film offers a dreamy four-minute glimpse of the amusement district at its peak. Two years prior, Luna Park had opened, full of lavish electric landscaping and a futuristic “dark ride”, A Trip to the Moon, in which passengers left Earth to cavort with moonlit maidens and Selenites. And a year after that, the ribbon was cut at Dreamland, home to lagoons, towers, and one million electric lights. These venues, along with Steeplechase Park, built in 1897, formed the trio of iconic parks that competed during Coney Island’s heyday.

Read more here.