The sunshine (finally) tells me that summer is just around the corner. And for those of us who currently live in or have memories of living in New York, no place embodies summertime nostalgia more than Coney Island. "The People's Playground" has been all over the news lately, as developers have sought to demolish many iconic Astroland amusements, the city has counterproposed with a scaled-back development project, and Coney Island, that somewhat dingy throwback to an earlier era in American summertime leisure, has been specially granted a stay of execution for summer 2008. It would be interesting to ask your students their thoughts on the Coney Island development project: use a few articles and op-eds to build background knowledge of the contentious fight. Then ask them to submit their own proposals for the area along the Boardwalk, taking into consideration both the rich untouchable history of the neighborhood (the Cyclone roller coaster for instance has been designated a landmark), and the developer's desire to reinvigorate it from urban blight. Students might walk the area, map its recognizable landmarks and then return to the classroom to make models and pitch their own development ideas. An exercise like this asks students to incorporate their historical knowledge of a neighborhood into an opinion-based approach to current events.
As Coney Island's growing pains are grabbing headlines, institutions around the city are pausing to reflect on the role Coney Island has played in American history. These exhibits can help give your students a documentary sense of what Coney Island has been and could be in the future:
From November to April, the Brooklyn Museum mounted a fascinating photography exhibit entitled "Goodbye Coney Island?" which presented the changed and changing face of the neighborhood. Although the show is longer up, be sure to check out its behind-the-scenes blog by photography curator Patrick Amsellem, and the Goodbye Coney Island Flickr group, where many amateur photographers submitted their own photographic memories of the area.
Last month, The Bond Street Gallery, a new photography space in Gowanus, launched its inaugural show "Coney Island of the Heart," a collection of evocative black and white photographs by Harold Feinstein and others. Feinstein's work, like many Coney Island institutions, can seem timeless, hard-to-situate in history. When I visited the gallery a few weeks ago with a group of students, I asked them for their best guesses: when were these photographs taken? Many said the 1950s (and they were right), but the idea was to start a dialogue about chronology and timelessness. The exhibit has just been extended through June 5.
The Coney Island History Project, with a new exhibition space right under the Cyclone, will open after Memorial Day with a show on "Woody Guthrie's Coney Island Years." Stay tuned too, as they promise upcoming exhibits on "William Mangels: The Wizard of Coney Island" and "Coney Island's Amusement Icons."
Nothing, though, can beat a fieldtrip to Coney Island on a pre-summer day. Take a stroll on the Boardwalk, chomp into a Nathan's hot dog, gawk at the cold-weather sunbathers, try to envision what the iconic neighborhood might look like in two or twenty years. The neighborhood can teach students so much about the history of American immigration and the history of American leisure. What a perfect investigation to kick off the summer!
