Why Did the Bronx’s Freedomland Fail As an Amusement Park?
Freedomland was a theme park that aspired to greatness, but was undone almost as soon as it began.
In the northeast corner of the Bronx, where Co-Op City resides, there once was an amusement park that for a brief time in the sixties, challenged Disneyland in popularity.
Freedomland USA sought to bring America’s past, however selective and biased, to life in a variety of rides, attractions and reenactments. At eighty-five acres, it was presented as the world’s biggest entertainment center.
So why didn’t it survive?
Freedomland: The brainchild of an ousted Disney VP
Freedomland began with C.V. Wood, a former executive vice-president and general manager of Disneyland. He had worked closely with the Disney family in creating the California theme park.
In time, they believed Wood took too much credit for its success. Also, he was accused of being a con man. The Disneys let him go in 1956, a year after Disneyland opened. His role in its creation was stricken from the official record. Here’s more about Wood’s tenure with Disney.
Wood formed his own company and helped develop other theme parks. Then in 1958, in New York, he pitched an idea for a theme park meant to surpass Disneyland in scope.
A stroll through history and the future
Visitors to Freedomland took a trip through time. Like Disneyland, it had miniature “towns” evocative of different places and eras, not unlike Main Street USA, Adventureland or Frontierland. Actors in period costumes helped sell the illusion of being in different times.
The sets were interactive, and included:
“Old Chicago,” where visitors helped put out fires in buildings every twenty minutes, like in 1871.
“Little Old New York,” which offered tugboat rides (see photo at the top).
“San Francisco” had a motion simulator that recreated the 1906 earthquake.
“The Old Southwest” took riders through an underground mine train out of 1890.
“New Orleans,” as part of its Mardi Gras theme, included a pirate-like boat ride.
“The Great Plains,” which had a stagecoach ride, and
“Satellite City,” where a faux-spaceship simulated a trip through space.
The park also had historical re-enactments, real and imaginary animals to ride, boat rides, rides for children and more, in addition to themed gift shops and restaurants.
Freedomland was shaped roughly like the Continental US itself, divided by states. It was built in under a year, at an estimated cost of $65 million.
Problems with operation and decline
Opening Day, June 19, 1960, was unseasonably hot. Some rides either didn’t work or were roped off in places. The park operated seven days a week until September, when it became weekends-only. Indeed, Freedomland was better suited for the summer than the harsh New York winter.
Subsequent years became worse. Wood wanted Freedomland to be bigger, which drove up costs (it was $7 million in debt on Opening Day). Raising admission prices, plus adding concerts and more traditional amusement park rides didn’t help. Also, in 1964, the New York World’s Fair in Queens may have provided unwelcome competition.
By September 1964, Freedomland closed and filed for bankruptcy. Co-Op City and the Bay Plaza Shopping Center replaced the theme park by the late sixties.
Wood merged his company, Marco Engineering, with Freedomland sponsor McCulloch Motors Corporation. Later, in the eighties, as part of Warner Bros., he helped develop theme parks for them. Wood died in 1992.
Freedomland remembered
A marker commemorates Freedomland on the original site in the Bronx. Within the past twenty years, several books have been published about the theme park. A Facebook group exists for it as well. (The 2006 movie of the same name, however, has no connection.)
Despite its lukewarm critical reception, it is fondly remembered today, especially when visitors hear the radio jingle: “Mommy, Daddy, take my hand, take me out to Freedomland!”
@byrichwatson
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Beginning July 5: A literary tour of New York’s Hudson Valley.