Part 423: Coney Island – “Fire and Flames”
Besides “Trip to the Moon,” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” and “The War of Worlds,” Moses & Hamilton produced several smaller attractions at Luna Park. Thomas G. Moses recalled, “At Luna Park I had a big show of ‘Fire and Flames,’ a very effective amusement park show. Real fire, real engines and an awful mob of street vendors and loafers. A lot of good comedy and it did good business.”
The attraction that Moses referred to involved the burning of a four-story brick building over the space of a city block. In 1903, the New York Times described this upcoming attraction at Luna Park, reporting that the setting for “Fire and Flames” was to depict “the greater part of Manhattan Island below Forty-fifth Street, with millions of lights in the tall buildings” (New York Times, 28 Sept 1903, page 7). The article continued, “A hotel is to catch fire, when all the paraphernalia of the Fire Department, the ambulances, and police reserves are to be exhibited.”
The Peninsular Club Public Opinion journal advertised “Fire and Flames” as “the most realistic and stirring of all the shows.” The article explained, “Hundreds of supers take part in this, with many horses, cabs, wagons, several real trolley cars, fire engines, hook and ladder outfit, life net and water tower. The street scene is so life-like that it doesn’t seem like a show at all, and the flames bursting from the house-windows, the people at the windows screaming for help, the firemen scaling the walls with their ladders to bring down some, while others leap into the life-net, are all so terribly real that the audience feels that it has assisted at a bona-fide holocaust. The heat and ashes from the flames are sufficiently genuine to give all the thrills an ordinary mortal requires” (The Peninsular Club Public Opinion, August 12, 1905, Vol. XXXIX, No. 7, page 200).
In 1904, the former chief instructor of the New York City Fire Department, Henry W. McAdam, left his position after twenty-one years to become the director in charge of Luna Park’s “Fire and Flames” (Fire and Water Engineering, Vol. 37, 1905, page 248). McAdam was one of sixty fire fighters cast in three engine companies employed to work for Thompson for this one spectacle. The actual burning of the block involved four hundred people (Broadcast Weekly, page 7).
Moses recalled, “It was so popular that a similar attraction called ‘Fighting the Flames’ immediately appeared at “Dreamland,” the nearby amusement park also on Coney Island. Extant photographs documenting the two shows reveal almost identical spectacles.
Amusement park attractions, such as “Fire and Flames,” inspired early filmmakers to record the excitement and action of the spectacle. They left small snippets of popular culture that we are able to still explore when studying the past. Thomas Edison made a short movie depicting the 1904 “Fire and Flames” attraction at Coney Island, giving us a glimpse at the scene Moses describes above. Here is a link to the short film that Moses helped create for Luna Park: https://vimeo.com/165556307
I noticed something wile watching the film of “Fire and Flames;” the scenery is identical the “Fighting the Flames” as depicted in postcard s and photographs. “Fire and Flames” used a much bigger set. I wonder the film was incorrectly labeled at time of production since both attractions were filmed at the same time.
Similarly, the competing attraction “Fighting the Flames” was also filmed and is available to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJylhIhtrlA
To be continued…
