Dreamland
"Tall towers that had grown dim suddenly broke forth in electric outlines and gay rosettes of color, as the living spark of light travel hither and thither, until the place was transformed into an electric garden, of such a sort as Aladdin never dreamed."
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Albert Bigelow Paine (Sandy)
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William Reynolds, a local politician, took notice of Luna Park’s success and decided that opening his own park would be a profitable investment. Along with numerous other political cronies including Pat McCarren and Timothy Sullivan, they bought the property located between Surf Avenue and the ocean. The property was divided in half by a railroad terminal on one end and a pier at the other, so they bought the street and gained access to the full amount of land, causing free access to the beach of locals to be denied.
The night before the opening day of the season in 1911, workers were putting the finishing touches on the park. The ride Hellgate had sprung a leak and they were caulking it with tubs of hot tar. Unfortunately, at 1:30am light bulbs began popping over them from either short-circuiting or exploding from the heat of the tar. Either way, the lights completely went out, a worker accidentally kicked over a tub of hot tar, and Hellgate burst into flames. The fire alarm went off, but when the fire department arrived, the water pressure rapidly decreased as the flames grew higher. Something had gone wrong.
Meanwhile, the incubator babies were carried to safety but the animals were thought to be at a safe distance. They led the animals into the main arena to keep them calm, and all “lions, pumas, bears, wolves, leopards, hyenas, and antelopes [were kept] on a steady parade around the oval” (Stanton). The arena’s lights went out, however, and the animals panicked. Some were moved to safety, but others would not budge. As the arena itself began to burn, the keepers were ordered to shoot as many animals as possible to save them from a burning death.
The engineers were dismayed when they looked and found the water pumps working normally. Apparently when local businesses heard that Dreamland had caught fire, they quickly hooked up to the main system and sprayed their stores to prevent the fire from spreading to them. The fire department then had to call in boats and try to fight the fire from the sea with no luck. Dreamland was in ruins. By daybreak, only a few twisted arches remained from the lagoon bridge. Everything else was leveled. The loss was estimated at $5,200,000 and little of the park was insured. More than 2500 people ended up losing their jobs (Stanton).
Dreamland was built in order to be bigger and better than Luna Park. Its “Elaborate amusement structures with gaudy facades painted virgin white fronted on broad promenades surrounding a horseshoe shaped lagoon” aimed to overshadow Luna but many found it not the case (Stanton). Many of the attractions were copied from Luna, showing that Thompson and Dundy were still kings when it came to creativity. Dreamland did however literally overshadow Luna in one way however. The Beacon Tower with 100,000 lights shown brightly, dwarfing Luna’s Electric Tower.
The Fire of 1911 however, brought the end of the era. They decided not to rebuild and sold the property. The owners of Dreamland had suffered a $3,500,000 loss and decided not to rebuild. Their park hadn't been the success they thought it would have been. Since they were politicians, they had little trouble in unloading the property to the city for $1,800,000 (Stanton).
