ride the rotor with me.
If you've ever been to Kennywood Park, you've probably pondered why the Lost Kennywood sign reads "Pittsburg" or perhaps even why it exists at all. The archway and Lost Kennywood itself are both modeled after an amusement park long gone, Pittsburgh's very own Luna Park.
Luna Park was the first amusement park to be covered with electrical lighting, 67,000 light bulbs to be exact, but that wasn't the end of it's marvels. The park also boasted baby incubators. Though this may seem gruesome, the technology was still largely untested and not used in hospitals of the time. Amusement parks such as Luna were literal life-savers to premies until hospitals began adopting the technology in 1931.
The centre of the park featured a beautiful lagoon that also served as part of a Shoot-the-Shoots ride. If you long to experience the feeling of plunging into a lagoon, but don't have immediate access to a time machine, never fear, Kennywood has recreated this popular ride, calling it The Pittsburg Plunge.
In general, Pittsburgher's have never been well-traveled so Luna Park brought the world to them with a Japanese Village. In photos from inside the park you can see the large pagodas that were created to showcase life in Japan, complete with eighteen Japanese girls. Also on-site was a Japanese bake shop, offering treats blue-collar Pittsburghers would otherwise not encounter.
Other attractions on display included 18 tanks filled with various American fishes, the Temple of Mysteries which housed popular illusions, and a theatre which depicted the eruption of a volcano. Luna Park wasn't just an amusement park, it was also a place to learn and discover.
On September 5th, 1907 a new addition to the park, a lion named Cedar, escaped from his cage and showed his displeasure at being taken from his home and put on display. Tragically, patron sixty-four year old Mrs. Anna Hucke, was horribly mauled before police were finally able to kill the beast.
Luna Park met it's demise in 1909. I have searched far and wide, but it always come down to the same sentence: "Pittsburgh's park was closed in 1909 in the face of competition of a second trolly park nearby, the older (and still-existing) Kennywood Park". There are also murmurs of a fire on the premises in July of that year, but I can find no newspaper articles to corroborate.
This post gets it's title from Ride the Rotor by Phat Man Dee. You can check it, and the rest of her music, out at phatmandee.com
Vestiges of Luna Park are all around if you care to look for them, its name is carried on in Luna Lofts its image immortalized in Carnegie Science Center's Miniature Railroad and Village, but few know it ever existed.
Amusement parks were traditionally built at the end of trolly lines to encourage ridership and provide an escape from the city, Luna Park broke with tradition as it was nestled snug within city limits at the corner of Craig and Baum. Luna Park Pittsburgh was the first Ingersoll park under the "Luna Park" name and was built in 1905. Luna Park Pittsburgh, is not to be confused with the Coney Island amusement park of the same name created four years prior by Frederic Thompson and Elmer "Skip" Dundy, though the Pittsburgh park was modelled after it's Coney Island namesake.
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| A map of South Oakland in 2012 overlaid on a map from 1910. The red marker is the current location of Pittsburgh Filmmakers. |
The entrance to Luna Park was positioned on North Craig Street and Baum Blvd in South Oakland and is quite familiar to any one who has ever passed into Lost Kennywood. The lack of a "H" in Pittsburgh is easy to explain as Luna Park was built in the 20 years in which the United States Board on Geographic Names decided to standardize city names, ruling that all cities ending in "-burgh" should drop the "h".
Luna Park was the first amusement park to be covered with electrical lighting, 67,000 light bulbs to be exact, but that wasn't the end of it's marvels. The park also boasted baby incubators. Though this may seem gruesome, the technology was still largely untested and not used in hospitals of the time. Amusement parks such as Luna were literal life-savers to premies until hospitals began adopting the technology in 1931.The centre of the park featured a beautiful lagoon that also served as part of a Shoot-the-Shoots ride. If you long to experience the feeling of plunging into a lagoon, but don't have immediate access to a time machine, never fear, Kennywood has recreated this popular ride, calling it The Pittsburg Plunge.In general, Pittsburgher's have never been well-traveled so Luna Park brought the world to them with a Japanese Village. In photos from inside the park you can see the large pagodas that were created to showcase life in Japan, complete with eighteen Japanese girls. Also on-site was a Japanese bake shop, offering treats blue-collar Pittsburghers would otherwise not encounter.
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On September 5th, 1907 a new addition to the park, a lion named Cedar, escaped from his cage and showed his displeasure at being taken from his home and put on display. Tragically, patron sixty-four year old Mrs. Anna Hucke, was horribly mauled before police were finally able to kill the beast.
Luna Park met it's demise in 1909. I have searched far and wide, but it always come down to the same sentence: "Pittsburgh's park was closed in 1909 in the face of competition of a second trolly park nearby, the older (and still-existing) Kennywood Park". There are also murmurs of a fire on the premises in July of that year, but I can find no newspaper articles to corroborate.
This post gets it's title from Ride the Rotor by Phat Man Dee. You can check it, and the rest of her music, out at phatmandee.com
