Historian Charles Denson, author of Coney Island: Lost and Found, shot this video of the Faber’s Fascination sign on September 9th and 10th. An employee of the arcade lit up the Faber’s sign one last time before all of the letters were removed from the facade. As ATZ reported last week, the arcade, which has been in the Henderson Building since the 1930s, closed on Labor Day 2010.
Denson says in the video’s intro: “The iconic sign was the last remaining example of Coney’s bare bulb Electric Eden illumination that began with Luna Park in 1903. It is also the latest victim of predatory real-estate developer Thor Equities’ self-described summer of demolition, spurred on by the City’s rezoning of the site for a 30-story high-rise hotel that will most likely never be built. These images are from the sign’s last night of illumination.”
In “Four Coney Buildings to Fall,” Friday’s Story of the Day on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s website, Denson cited the new Luna Park and the rehab of the Parachute Jump as the kind of direction we should keep going in. “Coney Island is really down to a handful of what you could call ‘landmark’ buildings,” Denson said in the article. “It would be good if Thor Equities would at least save one of them.”
Related posts on ATZ…
September 9, 2010: Thor’s Coney Island: Faber’s Fascination Goes Dark After 50 Years
April 29, 2010: Photo of the Day: Interior of Coney Island’s Doomed Henderson Music Hall
April 21, 2010: Thor’s Coney Island: Tattered Tents, Deathwatch for Historic Buildings
March 3, 2010: Thor’s Coney Island: What Stillwell Looked Like Before Joe Sitt
Beautiful, Charles.
Sad indeed—my personal favorite, The World in Wax Musee,
was of course in the Henderson building
Did Denson move the Astro Tower and then scale it to get some of those shots?
[…] the last bare-bulb sign on Coney Island, the historian Charles Denson tells Amusing the Zillion, in the latest symbolic step before the demolition of the Henderson Building. The sign flashed above an arcade that had occupied […]
Yes, I saw them stripping the front of the building this weekend.
What they are doing is a crime. Another part of NY gone forever. Very depressing.
A beautiful and moving piece. Aside from the fact that it’s a crime that these businesses are being thrown out … couldn’t someone at least have made the effort to take the sign down carefully in order to preserve it as a historical artifact? The picture of the bare yellow bulbs lying broken in a heap on the sidewalk was heartbreaking!
[…] Ridge [RH] Crowds at 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival [mcbrooklyn] Baluchi's Happy Hour [All About 5th] Coney Island’s Faber’s Fascination by Charles Denson [ATZ] Ricky's Pop-Up Shop Comes To South Slope [FiPS] Photo by […]
Thanks for this Charles & ATZ. When I look where it was, I have a visual sensation akin to how my mouth feels having lost teeth. Still there but something important missing. Faber’s was warming to look at in the winter.
A sad day for the cultural life of New York City. This is what the piece by piece destruction of Coney Island looks like. A melancholy yet poignant view of the last night for a kinetic sign of Coney.