Imagine a patriotic playland of wholesome Americana, a theme park larger than Disneyland that celebrated the country’s frontier. Now imagine it was so down home and white bread that singer Pat Boone cut the opening day ribbon.
Where would you put this mythical playland? Kentucky? Oklahoma? Somewhere in the Midwest?
Believe it or not, this very nonurban theme park was in The Bronx, a largely forgotten place called Freedomland, which celebrated the heritage of our nation for five years in the 1960s.
According to the new book, “Freedomland U.S.A.: The Definitive History,” by Michael R. Virgintino (Theme Park Press), Freedomland, on the site where the Co-op City housing development now stands, was a place where you could ride a horse-drawn trolley through a replica of old New York and eat authentic New Orleans-style fried chicken.
Or you could participate in recreations of the Civil War, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the great Chicago Fire of 1871 — with legendary cow owner Mrs. O’Leary portrayed by a man, for some reason — while buying insurance and scoring free samples of decongestant.
Freedomland was the brainchild of an industrial engineer named Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood, known professionally as C.V. Wood.
Wood was instrumental in the creation of Disneyland, including helping determine the location. Walt Disney was a father figure to him until the relationship soured for reasons unknown, and he was fired in February 1956.
Taking several Disney employees with him, he had an idea for a park that would “tell the whole American story in one vast area shaped like the nation’s map and segmented into regions.” He and his staff brainstormed 500 potential themes and narrowed them down to seven.
The plan to build an 85-acre park on Bronx marshland was announced in April 1959. Freedomland put between 2,000 and 3,000 people to work at any time, and job listings included “buffalo wrangler, carousel-horse jeweler, totem-pole carver and stage-coach harness-maker.” Required skills for some also included “pretzel bending, seal keeping, doughnut rolling, can-can dancing, glassblowing, and space tracking.”
When Freedomland opened on June 19, 1960, more than 60,000 people sampled its 41 attractions related to seven periods of American history: “New York City from the late 1800s, Old Chicago at the time of the great fire, the plains country of farms and forts, San Francisco at the time of the Great Earthquake, the untamed southwest, the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, and the present and future of space flight at Cape Canaveral.”
The park was so highly anticipated that Mayor Robert Wagner proclaimed opening day “Freedomland Day,” and a then-little-known reporter named Gay Talese wrote the following about it in The New York Times: “Out of a cloud of dust and thundering hoofbeats in the Bronx yesterday rode two cowboys, four showgirls, a bulldozer ballet and a posse of press agents — all hired to publicize what they called the ‘greatest outdoor entertainment center in the history of man.’ ”
Every attraction in the park had its own corporate sponsor, and in some cases, they determined the nature of the attraction. In Little Old New York, Borden Dairy ran the 1890s ice cream parlor, Amoco set up a “horseless carriage ride” featuring replicas of 1909 Cadillacs, and Macy’s built a three-story recreation of its original store from 1858.
In Old Chicago, park visitors experienced a recreation of the Great Chicago Fire with flames rising more than seven feet. They were extinguished using the antique water pumper that fought the real Chicago fire. “Firemen would rush the antique water pumper to the scene,” Virgintino writes, “and park guests, often children, would handle the pump to douse the flames.”
As for Elsie, Mrs. O’Leary’s supposed firestarter of a cow? Borden provided the cow, but given that this was a theme park and also New York, it was handled a bit differently than it would have been on a farm.
Her home, known as Elsie’s Boudoir, was “designed by the company of William Pahlmann, a prominent New York-based designer,” and found her living in “a fancy brass rail enclosure with red velvet drapes and chairs [and carpeting],” writes Virgintino, who notes that her appearance was as luxurious as her accommodations.
“Elsie always was well-coiffed for Freedomland parades. During the opening showcase for the 1962 season, Elsie was fitted with a wig created by Mr. Anthos, a well-known New York City hairdresser. A Freedomland publicity picture of the hairdresser applying the finishing touches appeared in newspapers across the country.”
San Francisco: 1906 featured a realistic recreation of the quake, which was described in park literature as follows: “On April 18, 1906, the ground fell from under San Francisco’s feet. You will safely see the San Francisco earthquake and fire re-created in harrowing detail. You will ride past buckling sidewalks, open fissures and collapsing buildings. You will see houses slide sideways and crack in two, then burst into flames.”
The exhibit also featured Pacific harbor seals, which caused a problem when two of them left the friendly confines of the park to tie up traffic on a nearby street. The
300-pound male was captured by the ASPCA, but the 100-pound female was simply loaded into an NYPD patrol car and driven back.
While fun was the order of the day, some of the offerings tilted toward the strangely practical.
In Little Old New York, a period-faithful apothecary shop — sponsored by the Schering Corp., which is now part of Merck & Co. — “provided guests with free samples of the decongestant Coricidin.”
In other less-than-fun exhibits, Continental Casualty had “a $ 10,000 accidental death policy” available for “just a quarter,” with every policy also coming with a free fire hat for kids.
Then there was the entertainment. Starting with Lionel Hampton providing the music for opening day, the most popular performers of the time played Freedomland.
Singer Paul Anka was a regular, and the singer of the park’s radio jingles. Receiving up to $ 100,000 (around $ 850,000 today) for just one weekend, Anka participated in park promotions as well.
“One promotion involved Paul and the slippers of his female fans,” Virgintino writes.
“The promotion asked girls to send in one of their slippers along with a photo before Paul would make an appearance at the park. He selected a slipper and then he and the young lady enjoyed a date.”
Given the times, this was hardly the only inappropriate promotion at Freedomland. In 1962, actor Troy Donahue hosted a “Most Watchable Girl” contest, sponsored by the American Society of Girl Watchers, which was an actual thing, apparently. Comedy legend Jackie Gleason was on hand and nominated his own favorite, Jan Crockett, an actress who had appeared on his show and was then a “weather girl” on WABC-TV.
Pageant winners were also a regular draw. One early appearance introduced park visitors to 1960’s Miss Wool of America, described in all seriousness by a fashion columnist as “a sort of an Ambassadress of Good Wool.”
Despite the thrills and stars, park attendance was never consistently high enough for the park to earn a profit. In the second season, two new entertainment venues, the Moon Bowl and the Hollywood Arena, were added for more live performances and dancing. By season three, nonhistoric, garden- variety rides were added in an effort to boost attendance. By the fourth season, the park spread the word that its attractions were up for sale.
As bankruptcy loomed by 1964, Freedomland’s historical bent was barely a whisper, “overshadowed by thrill rides and games of chance” as “areas of the park resembled an abandoned movie set or ghost town.”
On Sept. 13, 1964, Freedomland closed its doors for the final time. Six months later, the housing project that was to become Co-op City was announced.
In 1970, according to Virgintino, William Zeckendorf, whose company owned the land the park sat on, told The New York Times that Freedomland had been a ruse, calling it a “device to hold the land.”
“He admitted years later that the park was a temporary occupant until variances could be obtained to construct large apartment buildings on his marshland,” Virgintino writes. “The development that became known as Co-op City had been conceived during the late ’50s.”
One man closely following the Freedomland adventure was Walt Disney, who learned a valuable lesson from his former protégé’s fall.
“Many of the issues faced by Freedomland were revealed to Walt Disney during his involvement with the New York World’s Fair,” writes Virgintino. “Though Walt had contemplated a northeast option for a new park, the various labor, construction and weather issues in the region, along with his personal experiences at the fair, convinced him to build in Florida.”