By the turn into the twentieth century, Coney Island was more likely to be called “ Sodom by the Sea” than anything else. The grand pavilions seemed dowdy and increasingly obsolete as prostitution, noise, gambling, and prize fights took over the district in the 1890s. “Coney Island,” writes Lucy Gillman, “ was New York’s psychological ‘safety-valve.’” Coney Island, New York, early 1900s, via Wikimedia Commonsīefore long, though, the refined pleasures of eating clams and beer in a palatial hotel, or taking in a carousel, a rollercoaster, or a sideshow, fell by the wayside. The grand pavilions seemed dowdy and increasingly obsolete as prostitution, noise, gambling, and prize fights took over the district in the 1890s.Ĭoney Island, technically part of south Brooklyn, was a draw for New Yorkers well before it became a household name, and through much of the mid-nineteenth century, its appeal lay in the combination of three things a whole lot of people liked: a beach, a hearty disregard for rules, and a clutch of businesses that emphasized pleasure: “scattered restaurants, bath houses and beer saloons, all shacks.” By the early 1870s, however, investors had come to the beach and poured more than twenty million dollars into a range of high-end hotels and amusements, all of which drew middle- and upper-class New Yorkers and their disposable income in droves.
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