Once referred to as Graham Beach, the area was originally a summer beach colony consisting of many bungalows and tents. Located nearby was Warren Manor, a residential development that was demolished in the 1950s to make way for a proposed new City University of New York campus that was never built. By the early 20th century, many Italian-Americans, including immigrants, settled in the neighborhood, and their descendants still form the majority of the community’s population.
The Roller Boller Coaster (1907-1917) was one of several coasters to be built in South Beach
By the mid-1880s, South Beach’s amusement area consisted of a 1,700-foot (520 m) boardwalk, a carousel, a Noah’s Ark ride, beer gardens, as well as games of chance and other suspicious game booths. However, the beach was still the most popular activity in the area, and picnicking was a common activity. As a result of reforms in 1890, these questionable game booths had been removed and bathing kiosks had been built in their place. Much of the area was destroyed by a fire in September 1896 that destroyed a third of the boardwalk, as well as numerous hotels and businesses, two hundred bathhouses, a carousel, and a photo gallery. Many of the hotels could not feasibly be rebuilt, as the leases expired in one and a half years. LaMarcus Adna Thompson built one of his Scenic Railway roller coasters in South Beach in 1899, though that only lasted four years. Another large fire swept the area in 1902.
The 15-acre (6.1 ha) Happyland Amusement Park, an enclosed park with numerous attractions and landscape features, opened on June 30, 1906, to a crowd of 30,000 people. Upon its opening, the park contained a beachfront of 1,000 feet (300 m), a 1,500-foot (460 m) pier, and a 30-foot-wide (9.1 m) boardwalk, as well as a system of over 10,000 lights. The park’s rides included a circle swing, a Magnetic House, a Foolish House, a L.A. Thompson miniature railroad, an airship ride, a carousel, a Shoot the Chute, a revolving 190-foot-tall (58 m) tower. One source adds that “fortune tellers, card printers, and photography studios” began to open very close to the park.
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