Time travel back to Coney Island at Night in 1905 and see a panoramic view of the magical lights of Luna Park, Dreamland and Steeplechase. This early time exposure was made by pioneering filmmaker Edwin S. Porter, whose use of panning and the first after-dark photography can be seen in films of the 1901 Pan-Am Exposition in Buffalo. The long, sweeping view of Coney Island’s three great amusement parks ends with the camera panning up and down the Dreamland Tower.
According to Charles Musser’s Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company, Edison acquired “the exclusive privilege” for the 1905 season at Dreamland. Other subjects made by Porter under this contract are Hippodrome Races, Dreamland, Coney Island (June 1905), Mystic Shriners’ Day, Dreamland, Coney Island (July 1905), June’s Birthday Party (July 1905), and Boarding School Girls. In this version of the film, the young ladies of Miss Knapp’s Select School go on an outing to Coney Island where they pass through Dreamland’s Creation gate, frolic in the surf and ride Steeplechase’s camels and mechanical Horse Race.
Related posts on ATZ…
August 16, 2011: Video of the Day: “IT Girl” Clara Bow in Coney Island
January 15, 2011: ATZ Saturday Matinee: Shorty at Coney Island
December 16, 2010: Blast from the Past: LFO’s Summer Girls Music Video
September 27, 2010: Video: The Museum of Wax by Charles Ludlam
Amusing the Zillion 
The electric light was already 25 years old in 1905, and yet Luna Park awed with its thousands of lights. Even today its magnificence would impress even the most bored and jaded.
I wonder how many people were employed to change the hundreds of thousands of tiny light bulbs!
Those were wonderful! But can you imagine trying to swim in those get-ups?
Also amazing to see the ladies in their Victorian dresses riding the rides, especially the Steeplechase horses!
Unbearably haunting. If only, if only…if only. Well, it’s New York City after all… I guess we’ll be content with a parking lot full of trailer-mounted rides.
Don’t give up hope, the RFP for the permanent park goes out in something like 7 years!
I hope it will be wheelchair accessible…
My uncle had a job changing the lightbulbs on the parachute jump in the ’40’s!
Thanks for the memories…..
Did Porter use that music in his film or was it added on later? Any idea what the song was called?