Picturing the Strange, Dreamy History of Coney Island

On any given summer afternoon, if you were to tumble out of the D train at its terminus at Surf Avenue in Brooklyn, you’d see fluorescent signs hawking pizza and splashy drinks, and the rickety wooden skeleton of the Cyclone roller coaster against a blue backdrop, some mix of water and sky. It would be loud. You’d hear folks trumpeting their midway games, or snippets of music blaring from rides. It would smell like sunscreen and fryer grease, and maybe a little bit of brine.

Over a century ago, of course, the landscape was strikingly different. Samuel Carr’s 1879 painting Beach Scene (above) depicts a swath of sand that doubles as a promenade—men in three-piece suits escorting ladies twirling parasols. This early depiction of the beach that would become Coney Island just begins to nod to its status as an amusement park. There’s a modest, portable puppet theater at left; in the center of the painting, a family poses for a tin-type photograph. It’s already a place to be seen, but bears little resemblance to today’s raucous environment.