One of the treasures of our family albums is a fairly damaged family photo at Coney Island around 1920. We still have not identified everyone in the photo yet, but we’ve got some good educated guesses going, as well as a slight mystery I plan to blog about soon.
I’ve been working on repairing a few photos so that I can give them as gifts to family members. Below is my handywork on the Coney Island image. Admittedly, a couple of the faces are not perfect, but given the extent of the folds and tears I’m very happy with how they turned out.
Move your mouse over the image to see the repaired* version. Click Here to see the full family notes on it at The Flickr.
*Note: the mouse hover technique on my blog lightens images up in Firefox – the final version doesn’t get lighter as it appears to in the post. Need to figure out what in the code is doing that and give it a stern talking to.
Update: I wasn’t absolutely sure about the location of the photo – after some online research I guessed that the roller coaster behind them was the Giant Racer, given the likely 1920 – 1922 time frame. But, I wasn’t able to find any photos or postcards that had the right angle for me to compare and make a definitive guess and it was annoying me.
Then, I found the “Ask Mr. Coney” column and fired off a question about it. He graciously responded very quickly and with terrific detail, which will help us provide some background color to the image. So, Thanks to Mr. Coney!
His reply about the location:
“The photograph was taken between West 8th Street and West 5th on the public beach, former site of Dreamland.
The turreted building on the right is the Sagamore Hotel, on the corner of West 8th and Surf Avenue. The coaster is the Giant Racer, and the twin towers behind it belongs to Luna’s Aquadrome entrance at West 10th Street. The tent-like structure behind the tent in foreground houses the Dreamland Circus Sideshow and the billboard just behind the tent was located above the L.A. Thompson Scenic Railway.”
