Willow Grove Park, Philadelphia’s Fairyland
NP: [1905].
5 x 8 inches, oblong. [40] pp, in pictorial stapled wrappers. Many b/w illustrations from photographs, including a double-page panorama at the center. Light handling wear, mild vertical crease; very good.
Willow Grove Park, which opened in 1896, was a genteel version of an amusement park, developed by the People’s Traction Company of Philadelphia to encourage trolley ridership to the end of the line. Billed here as “the finest summer resort in the world,” the Park offered peaceful spots for picnicking, strolling, and boating, pavilions for concerts and dancing, and amusements “of a character pleasing to the most refined tastes,” which included a tame roller coaster (the “Mountain Scenic Railway”), two carousels, an interactive anthracite coal mining exhibit, and the “Sir Hiram Maxim Captive Flying-Machine.” The latter was 100 feet high and boasted “ten great extending arms from which are extended ten ‘airships’ in which the passengers take their novel flight,” suspended from long steel cables. The Park became nationally famous for the concerts in its music pavilion, particularly after John Philip Sousa and his band started playing annual concerts there in 1901. This well-illustrated booklet provides the summer’s line-up (which also featured the Herbert’s Orchestra, Conway’s Ithaca Band, the United States Indian Band, and Damrosch’s Orchestra) and describes each of the Park’s attractions. New in 1905 was the Willowgraph Theater, which offered visitors “an unprecedented exhibition of moving life pictures, including an entirely new assortment of comic, magic, mystic views and trick film novelties,” and “the longest continuous moving picture entertainment ever given in the United States, employing for this purpose three thousand feet of film.” Although this title was apparently issued annually between 1903 and 1910, we located only 7 copies of any edition in OCLC.
Item #19914
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