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1. Please note: I'm sure you are aware that graphics take their own sweet time to download (unless you have a cable modem which then, like Ed Norton says, zip zip and it's done; that's with cable which I don't have) ... So what does it mean? It means you'll have to give this page an itsy bitsy time to come in. Try playing solitaire for awhile, and try dealing three cards at a time, if you dare.

2. Unless you know exactly what you're looking for, it'll be easier to just scroll. Now that rhymes with stroll, an easy stroll through early Coney Island hotels. That's much better than being jet-propelled. Propulsion through old Coney Island is nonsense unless it's one of their famous rides.

Surf House ... Tilyou's Surf House served food and rented bathing suits to guests.
The Elephant Hotel ... anything to provide diversion for Coney's Island's tourists.
Manhattan Beach Hotel ... featured 258 rooms, restaurants, ballroom and shops
Brighton Beach Hotel ... all the ladies with long skirts and all men with straw hats.
Brighton Beach Hotel ... moving the 6000 ton three story hotel 600 feet inland.
Iron Pier ... bathers in revealing suits frolicking - the Iron Pier in the background.
Oriental Hotel ... of all the hotels, serving rich guests this was the most snobbish.

During the early 19th century there was considerable discussion in the community of Gravesend of building a shell road across the creek to the nearby beach, since the only existing approach involved crossing the creek at low tide. Then nothing occurred until 1823 when Supervisor Terhune and others formed the Coney Island Road and Bridge Company as a private enterprise. They sought funding through a stock issue of 300 shares at $20 a share. The shares were purchased quickly and in 1829 the company built the Shell Road across the creek that separated Coney Island from the mainland. They also built a hotel called the Coney Island House which marked the beginning of summer resort business.

What followed was John Wyckoff's Coney Island House in 1840 and then additional tourist development began in 1846 in the far westerly point of the beach (and also closest to Manhattan by boat) that was later to be known as Norton's Point or Coney Island Point (now Sea Gate). Then followed was a period of hotel development that made this area the vacation spot for many notable figures in the political and in the arts arena. We'll start with Peter Tilyou (Sounds familiar? It should as this family developed the Steeplechase here in Coney Island.)

Tilyou's Surf Bath House served food and rented bathing suits to visitors.

Peter Tilyou and family moved to Coney Island in 1865 to establish the Surf House, a hotel and restaurant which sold Bavarian Lager for five cents. Tilyou would treat those, who rented a bathing suit for 25 cents, to a free bowl of homemade clam chowder on the theory was that those that were hungry would spend more money for more food at his restaurant (invest a little for greater returns). He built bath houses nearby for those who wished to change from their city clothes into fancy full length flannel bathing suits. ... Signs on the beach warned "Bathers Without Full Suits Positively Prohibited by Law."�

The Elephant Hotel and Sea Beach Palace to its right.
They were north of Surf Avenue and notice the background.
All marshland right up to Gravesend Bay - 1890's.

During the 1880's there was plenty of opportunity for entrepreneurs who could provide diversion for Coney's Island's tourists. In 1885 James V. Lafferty built the Elephant Hotel, a small hotel in the shape of an elephant. It stood 122 feet high, with legs 60 feet in circumference. A cigar store operated out of one front leg, and a diorama was in the other. A spiral staircase in the hind leg led visitors upstairs where a shop and several guest rooms were located. The elephant's head, facing the ocean, offered good vistas of the sea through slits where the eyes were located. Eventually the hotel became associated with prostitution, which prompted the local expression, “seeing the elephant.”

The 700 foot long Manhattan Beach Hotel was built in 1877.
Located between what is now West End Avenue and Dover Street.
It featured 258 lavish rooms, restaurants, ballroom and shops.

Corbin's Manhattan Beach Hotel was built on the far eastern shore of Coney Island. Austin Corbin was a banker and president of the Long Island Rail Road. Architect J. Pickering Putnam set its nearly 700 feet long front with its covered verandas and acres of manicured lawns facing the sea. It was considered the most elegant and fashionable hotel in the United States. It featured 258 lavish rooms, restaurants, ballroom and shops. When Ulysses S. Grant delivered the dedication speech for the hotel's grand opening on July 4, 1877, the event along with the free fireworks show drew such huge crowds that it overwhelmed Corbin's railroad.

Coney Island's three big luxury hotels, the Manhattan Beach, the Oriental, and the Brighton Beach, were surely the epitome of a gracious and leisurely age, a unique expression of their era. They were long rambling wooden structures, 600 to 800 feet long with deep verandas (porches) reaching down their entire length. They faced the sea but were set back by wide green lawns decorated with beds of geraniums and lobelias, and had broad curving walks. They even had Pinkerton detectives patrolling the grounds and beach to provide the needed security.

Controversy has occasionally struck the neighborhood. Only two apartment houses are built in the community. Both were constructed during lapses in the variance laws. Streets were given British names, suggesting the snobbery of both Austin Corbin, and real estate developer Joseph P. Day. They wanted to infuse English aristocracy into the Manhattan Beach community.

Shopping there is is virtually non-existent, but the residents can walk across the pedestrian-only Ocean Avenue Bridge, first built in 1880 for the burgeoning resort community, to the adjacent neighborhoods of Sheepshead Bay, or cross West End Avenue and come into my neighborhood, Brighton Beach. Here, along Brighton Beach Avenue you'll find all the shopping you want. We don't look for English aristocracy; you'd really have to see the aristocrats walking on my shopping avenue to get the joke. I wonder what Corbin and Day would think if they saw us.

In this picture the background that juts into the water is the extension of Corbin Place where Manhattan Beach begins. Most of Manhattan Beach are expensive one-family homes and at the eastern tip is Kingsborough Community College.

Regarding Kingsborough, I would think this was the weirdest place to put any college, it being the end of a peninsula. Everyone knows that a college (like, for example, Brooklyn College) should be in the center of a community; that would make sense. This area originally belonged to the Federal Government as a Coast Guard Station. When that was no longer needed, it was a choice of a college or a city housing project. Well, you know the rest.

While businessmen like Feltman in West Brighton profited by the build up of sand that increased the depth of their ocean front property, the beach was steadily eroding to the east of them at Brighton Beach. By 1888 the beach became so badly eroded in front of the Brighton Beach Hotel that waves threatened the structure. So to save the 500 foot long, three story hotel that weighed 6000 tons, workers jacked up the entire hotel and placed it on 120 rail cars, then easing it inland six hundred feet. Then six locomotives teams, beginning on April 3, 1888, moved the building so gently that not a pane of glass was broken nor a mirror in a room was cracked. The job was finished on June 29th with the hotel ready for business.

Engeman constructed his Brighton Beach Hotel in time for the 1878 season. This vast wooden hotel, 460 x 210 feet and several stories high, with accommodations for nearly 5000, could also feed 20,000 people per day. He also constructed an Iron Pier nearby, also the 400 foot wide two story Brighton Beach Pavilion. Coney Island's seedier section was immediatley to the west so it was frequented by the upper middle class rather than the "old money" wealthy.

Opposite the station stood the 300 feet tall Iron Tower, a structure with steam elevators that whisked visitors to the top for a high view of Coney Island. Andrew R. Culver (today we have a train line named after him) had purchased it from the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition.

The Culver Line began service on June 19th, 1875 as a steam railroad called the Prospect Park and Coney Island between Prospect Park (9th Ave. and 20th Street) and Gravesend Avenue and Neck Road. On July 27th of the same year, the steam line reached Cable's Hotel (later known as the Ocean View) in the West Brighton section of Coney Island at Culver Terminal. (Culver Terminal is the predecessor to today's Stillwell Avenue; its original location was at Surf Avenue and West 5th Street approximately where the Brightwater Towers stand today. Culver Terminal was a surface terminal adjacent to a roller coaster.) In 1879, the railroad leased the New York and Coney Island Railroad, with service beginning between Culver Terminal and Norton's Point, the western most tip of Coney Island. Connections to steamboats to and from New York City were made at Norton's Point.

While there was no way for Andrew Culver to obtain exclusivity near his railroad terminal, others like McKane sensed rising real estate values and prosperity to their nearby restaurants and hotels. Then there was a marked increase of shops, saloons, houses of prostitution, eating establishments, sideshows and games in the vicinity of Culver Plaza. By 1878 more than 50,000 of the 60,000 visitors to Coney Island on a warm summer Sunday headed for West Brighton. McKane, who built many of the ramshackle restaurants, beer gardens and hotels nearby, took a lease on a the lot adjacent to the one rented to the Iron Pier Company.

The Oriental Hotel, located between Ocean Avenue and Girard Street, was the most snobbish of the lot; it served rich customers with their families who often stayed the entire summer. Weekends were the most crowded when passengers arrived on trains seventeen cars long. Cots were set up in the hotel's corridors to accommodate the overflow.

The sport of the kings came to Brooklyn (Kings County).

Hard times caused a fallout of interest in horse racing which then led the hotel management to bring in Joseph P. Day, who had successfully marketed Midwood Estates. The Manhattan Beach Hotel closed after the 1911 season and then was demolished the following year, only two years after the enactment of the fatal New York State anti-betting legislation. Joseph Day kept the Oriental Hotel going for four more summers. Eventually, wood from the hotel was used for construction of the boardwalk and bungalows of Rockaway Point. On the same land today is the Manhattan Beach Park with a modern playground, a ball field (not completed), a picnic area, and a beach; all open to the public, and with this public coming from the northern part of Ocean Avenue with easy bus access, I'm sure it's a sore spot to the aristocratic residents of Manhattan Beach. Sorry, I got ahead of myself.

The Oriental Hotel - looking east.

The hotel was eventually replaced by the Manhattan Beach Bath Houses and Resort It had excellent handball courts, and bandstand featuring Rudy Vallee in the 1921 season (although dancing was not allowed) and a lagoon for children; the cost was $20 for a locker and a season's pass. Day even purchased one of the nine original houses built on Corbin Place that same year. Interesting that handball became a staple sport in Brighton Beach and Coney Island; my father-in-law reaching many semi finals in some big tournaments here.

The Baths boasted a baseball diamond, two outdoor pools, miniature golf, handball, tennis and basketball courts, a skating rink (both roller and ice), and a restaurant. The women lifeguards made the cover of Life with the accompanying story, “Life Goes to a Party at Joseph Day's Manhattan Beach Baths.” It was then billed as the “World's Largest Privately Owned Playground.”

By 1939, eighty-eight new houses were developed for $1 million as well as 174 new summer cottages; 1940 saw a similar growth and in 1941, the Waxboro Corporation advertised a home community for $4 million on eastern Manhattan Beach. But as it would happen, on that fateful day of infamy, December 7, 1941, Johnny McGee, the bandleader playing at the Lodge, announced the bombardment of Pearl Harbor. It was then that a drastic change was implicit for Manhattan Beach. No longer would it be a playground; now it would be a training ground for war. By 1942, bath members were told to clean out their lockers and the land was sold to the United States.

The Coast Guard station established on the present beach area trained over one-third of their personnel at the Brooklyn base while the merchant marine civilians who transported supplies by ship, processed over 115,000 seamen, one-half of the nation's volunteer sailors.

Both bases closed in 1945, at the end of the war, but Robert Moses, then Parks Commissioner for New York City and State, requested the land for a state park; he only received the beach as a city park. The eastern tip was a point of contention between the state and federal governments. So, in the interim while legal battles were fought in the courts, the US Air Force, the New York Air National Guard and Veterans' Housing utilized barracks on the disputed land; until finally Kingsborough Community College was founded in 1964. The city and state eventually donated the land for an educational facility for a token fee of $1 ... By now you and I know the real reason it became a college (wink) it's called political expediency; the residents didn't want it to resemble the demographic ambiance of Coney Island.

Aside from photographs and memories, very little remains from the former lives of Manhattan Beach. Of the hotels, nothing remains except a public park, the sand of Manhattan Beach on which you recall, the 480 room Oriental Hotel rested. The 353 room Manhattan Beach Hotel (1877-1911) was built approximately between West End Avenue and Dover Streets. Point Breeze, at the tip of the island, had a 100 room hotel and a pavilion for day guests, picnickers and fishing parties, about where the college is, but it disappeared in the 1888 winter storms.

And then in the last years of the Manhattan Beach Baths, a gate and a flagpole were acquired from the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. The gate, from the "Gardens on Parade"� exhibit, was eventually melted down for the "war effort."� The flagpole still remains on the KCC campus.

On the Kingsborough campus, the most noticeable relic of the federal government is the gun near the main gate, a reminder from the days when the merchant marine trained on the site and a bronze plaque honoring the war dead who had graduated from the base school.

A point of pride here, notwithstanding some remarks I might have made, is that Manhattan Beach has been the home of many notable Brooklyn personalities. Until his death, Judge Samuel Liebowitz lived on the corner of Coleridge and Hampton Streets. It was during the 1930's that he was the criminal lawyer who defended the Scotsboro Boys, black men who were railroaded and accused of raping two white women. These women eventually admitted that they had lied. Then having experienced the defending side of criminal law, he later became a tough judge here in Brooklyn, and as the ruling judge in the trial of Murder, Inc. members, a murder-by-contract gang, he received many death threats. He was a good judge. Some other residents over the years have been the Modells, who own the sporting goods chain, and the Streits, who make kosher food products.

Any corrections? ... ... you be my guest.

They'd say, "Hey, I'll kick you to Canarsie ... that's what they used to say.
And what do we have here ... The Cyclone ... known all over the world.
All right, here's the way ... Old Brooklyn ... used to look years ago.
And now, just for fun, only ... Old Brooklynites ... could possibly understand.
Now for the history buffs ... Coney History 1609-1880 ... very humble beginnings.
And if that's too much ... Brooklyn - a Quick History ... for those in a hurry.
Great, here you can see ... 1879 Map of Coney Island ... where everything was.
Look, old Coney Island's ... Beach & Boardwalk ... used to looked like this.
And a Brooklynese letter - Brooklynese Letter ... from Bill Gates himself.
Finally, old Brooklyn ... Remember When ... fond, recollections.
Oh yeah, lest we forget - Brooklyn Now - The Modern Way - you will recognize it.
We'll return to the ... Navigator ... our contents page.