Palisades Amusement Park
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Palisades Amusement Park was an amusement park located in New Jersey, USA, in the New York City area. It was atop the New Jersey Palisades and was partially in Cliffside Park and partly in Fort Lee. It was in operation from 1898 until 1971, and near the end of its life was still one of the most-visited amusement parks in the United States. After the park closed, high-rise housing units were built on its site.
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[edit] The Trolley Park Era
The Park on the Palisades opened in 1898 as a trolley park, a weekend destination planted by the Bergen County Traction Company, a trolley operator that provided service between the Edgewater ferry landing and the top of the Palisades. In this original incarnation, the park had few characteristics of an amusement park. Nonetheless, patrons utilized the trolley line to reach the passive recreation site atop the hill.
[edit] The Schenck Brothers: 1908-1934
Under new ownership in 1908, the park was renamed Palisades Amusement Park and started to add amusement rides and attractions. By 1910, the park was owned by Nicholas and Joseph Schenck, who were instrumental in the motion picture industry that at the time had a major hub in Fort Lee. The name of the park became Schenck Bros. Palisade Park. In 1913, they added a salt-water swimming pool by pumping water from the saline Hudson River, 200 feet (60 metres) below. The pool, 400 by 600 feet (120 metres by 180 metres) in surface area, was billed as the largest salt-water pool in the nation.
Through the continued addition of attractions, the park became well-enough known by the 1920s that the Borough of Palisades Park, located west of the amusement park, contemplated changing its name to avoid confusion with the popular summer destination up the hill along the cliffs.
[edit] The Rosenthal Brothers: 1934-1971
In 1934, the Schencks sold the amusement park to Jack and Irving Rosenthal, entrepreneurs from Brooklyn who had built a fortune as concessionaires at Coney Island. The Rosenthals were responsible for building the Cyclone roller coaster in 1927; as of 2005 that coaster is still in operation. The Rosenthals, who renamed the facility Palisades Amusement Park, rode out the duration of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II, but in 1944 much of the park was destroyed by a fire that reportedly started beneath one of the amusement rides.
The Rosenthals rebuilt the park in short order, and it reopened for the 1945 season and each successive spring through 1971. The new attraction at the park was a roller coaster they called the Cyclone, naming it after their beloved Coney Island coaster. The wooden coaster actually used part of the previously erected Skyrocket coaster which was partially damaged in the 1944 fire.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the park's reputation and attendance continued to grow, thanks to saturation advertising and the continued success of the music pavilion, which had stood since the Schenck days but in the mid-1950s started featuring rock and roll shows hosted by local disc jockey Bruce Morrow, also known as "Cousin Brucie". During the 1960s, Motown acts were also featured prominently. The park was known to children nationally, not just in the New York City metropolitan area, as advertisements for it were staples of the back pages of 1950s and 1960s comic books. The Rosenthals figured, correctly, that the largest single market for comic books was youths of the New York City area, and that comic book advertising represented a faily small investment per potential consumer reached.
A not-so-secret feature of the park was the hole in the fence behind the music stage. Area children used this hole to enter the park without paying the admission fee. This hole was deliberately left unrepaired as unlike many amusement parks of today, each ride and attraction at Palisades Amusement Park carried its own price tag. Irving Rosenthal correctly reasoned that children with limited money to spend would be more likely to spend it at his park if they still had it to spend once they got inside. Along the same lines, Rosenthal blitzed the market with free-admission offers on matchbooks and in other places. In addition, parking was always free, although the on-site parking facility was vastly inadequate given the size of the crowds that the park generally attracted; the continued popularity of the park meant that many visitors parked on, and clogged, nearby side streets, to the great consternation of many area residents.
[edit] The Park's Demise
By 1967, the park had become so popular that officials in Cliffside Park had to answer residents' concerns about traffic, litter, and so forth. They realized that Irving Rosenthal was in his 70s and was not likely to run the park much longer. They also saw an opportunity to build housing stock to take advantage of the view of Manhattan that the Palisades offers. The solution was to re-zone the amusement park site for high-rise apartment housing.
Over the next four years, numerous builders surveyed the land. Finally, in January 1971, a Texas developer purchased the property, agreeing to lease it back to Irving Rosenthal for one final season of Palisades Amusement Park. The park closed on September 12, 1971. Shortly thereafter, buildings were dismantled and rides shipped out to other amusement operators in the United States and Canada. The towns of Cliffside Park and Fort Lee explored the possibility of using the pool for municipal recreation, but vandals had damaged the filtration system beyond repair.
Today, three high-rise apartment buildings occupy the site. The first to be built was Winston Towers, in Cliffside Park. One of the other buildings, Carlyle Towers, is also in Cliffside Park, while the other is in Fort Lee. In 1998, Winston Towers management installed a monument to Palisades Amusement Park on its property, on the centennial of the opening of the Park on the Palisades.
