The Dreamland Fire of 1911. What Really Happened?

By Michael Quinn

Born in 1890, my grandfather traveled the world by boat leaving his native Ireland as a teenager. The sea was his home until he arrived on the shores of America greeted by the illuminating and imposing skyline of Coney Island’s Dreamland.

“Yes, if Dubai and Vegas had a child it would have looked like Dreamland in 1904.”

This past May was the 109th Anniverary of the fire that destroyed this sumptuously glitzy short lived amusement park. Like the anniversary of the Slocum disaster, it’s a day silently acknowledged mostly by history enthusiasts.

What really happened that night?

There are stories that Dreamland owner William H. Reynolds watched the park burn from the top floor of the new Flatiron Building which housed the Dreamland Office. There are stories that the babies in Dr. Couney’s Incubator Exhibit all perished.

Both are not true.

Real Estate mogul and State Senator William H. Reynolds, former Mayor of Long Beach, NY (Reynold’s Channel anyone?). The man who built Prospect Heights, named Borough Park and later was an early investor of the Chrysler Building, was snug in his Long Beach, N.Y. home the very early morning of May 27, 1911 when his beloved park burned to the ground.

The fire was so intense that tens of thousands of bullets were blasting through the Coney Island air as cartridges in the shooting galleries exploded.

The fire which started at the Hell Gate ride was so intense that it was described as “sounding like a volcano erupting.”

At 3:03am the 374 foot Beacon Tower crashed down onto Surf ave. with “a pillar of smoke and flame 1,200 feet high.”The Beacon Tower would have been located approximately where the Aquarium’s 4-D Theater is today.

All six incubator babies were saved from the Dreamland Plaza a mere 100 feet away from the doomed animals locked in their cages.

Balmer’s Bathing Pavilion was destroyed on the east end as the west end flames licked the edges of Feltman’s Beer Garden.

Tom Ryan, the Democratic boss of Philly had a huge half a million dollar stake in Dreamland. All gone.

Harry Tudor, who managed the Creation attraction, which guests experienced upon entering Dreamland luckily escaped the blaze with only a fractured leg. Mr. Tudor with his wife and daughter lived in an apartment directly above the Creation Building.

Fisherman sleeping on the Iron Pier were awakened by the dank smell of smoke. Luckily they were saved by a police patrol boat.

As the Dreamland lagoon literally boiled, 80 animals were lost in the inferno. There were seven lions with names that included Sultan, Caesar, Havana, Prince, Black Prince, Spitfire and Susie, and a bear named Theodore Roosevelt.

A meager water supply could not stop the destruction of this Coney Island wonder.

I often daydream about stories of this amusement park that my grandfather could have told me.  Stories that stir the imagination. Yes, this amusement park. The one that greeted him as he entered his new home. His home away from the sea. However, he died on May 27th, three weeks before I was born, he died on the anniversary of the night, that night of the great fire that destroyed Dreamland.

You can “take a bite” out of Coney Island History.  See link below. 

 

                     Click here to learn more.