@Craftech posted:I lived right near there on City Island. Freedomland was right where Co-op City is now in Baychester. It was shaped and set up like each of the states and ran into financial trouble right from the get go. Plans to expand it never happened.
John
There have been some good books written on Freedomland, It closed when I was like a year old. I have read several books about it, and I have heard different theories about why it didn't make it. The initial construction ran long and the pavement from what I hear was still soft on opening day,was one of the funnier stories.
.Part of the problem it had was for a city attraction, it was relatively hard to get to, you had to take a subway and then a bus to get there, unlike with the world's fair where the city built extensions to the site, there was no attempt to do this (whether it would have been practical, I leave to the experts, I don't think you could have expanded the number 6 there, and building a branch off of the 5 train would likely have been impossible to justify). Maybe a train station on what is now Amtrak and a shuttle bus would have worked, could ride from Penn Station to there.
The other thing I heard was that Moses used his clout to try and keep the park from getting financing and that caused problems with the construction of it, he didn't want a rival to the world's fair (sad how both of them ended up busts).
My guess is what did it in was changing demographics, the middle class were leaving NYC by then, the area around it (Baychester) was changing, and that likely took away a significant part of what could of been their audience.
