Coney Island Presents Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire of 1911

Before September 11, 2001, the biggest fire in New York City's history took place in Coney Island; it took the lives of countless animals and created millions of dollars in damaged property; and it has been erased from the public's imagination of this iconic and important place. On May 27, 2011, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of that event, Coney Island will host a large-scale reenactment of it's own destructive collapse.

We are all familiar with the Coney Island of hot dogs, roller coasters, and side shows. But there is another, missing history: the Coney Island of large-scale, immersive spectacles which took place on a scale that is astonishing to the contemporary sensibility. These shows merged current events and theater and are astounding to todays ears: a Boer war reenactment starring real Boer war veterans; an incubator show, featuring real premature babies; Fighting the Flames, which staged thrilling full scale tenement fires every half hour for a paying audience; and countless others.

The Great Coney Island Spectacularium - a project by artists Joanna Ebenstein and Aaron Beebe - is a response to and an evocation of this under-remembered Coney Island. The newest element of this exhibition is The Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire, a 360 degree immersive cyclorama commemorating the 100th anniversary of New York's second most devastating disaster, the burning of Dreamland on May 27, 1911.

The Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire will premiere on May 27th 2011, and is inspired by the immersive disaster spectacles so popular in Coney Island around the turn of the century. It is a 360 degree sound, sight and light spectacular that will allow visitors to relive - in the style of a 19th Century pre-cinematic spectacle - a devastating disaster unparalleled in Coney Island History, one from which Dreamland never recovered.

The story of the burning of Dreamland reads uncannily like the script of one of the attractions which characterized Coney Island at this time. "The Dreamland fire," as historian Jeffrey Stanton describes, "had ended an era with its most spectacular and costliest pageant. It employed a cast of thousands and was witnessed by an audience of hundreds of thousands... There would be nothing to replace it."

Dreamland was never rebuilt after the great fire of 1911. If it had been, Ebenstein and Beebe are certain that the disaster would have been made into another thrilling amusement and given pride of place alongside popular reenactments of tenement fires, The San Francisco Earthquake, The Galveston Flood, and Pompeii destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius.

It is in this spirit that The Great Coney Island Spectacularium unveils The Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire. The Cosmorama - the first of its kind at Coney Island since the 1930's when Luna Park's "Little America" became the nation's last cosmorama - has been painstakingly constructed with the assistance of the finest scenic painters, lighting designers and prop builders from the theater and opera world. The end result is the creation of a 19th Century-style cosmorama that will allow visitors to experience the 1911 destruction of Dreamland by fire in an immersive 360 degree sound, sight, and light spectacular evoking the disaster spectacles which characterized pre-cinematic Coney Island.

The Cosmorama will officially launch at 8:00 PM on the evening of May 27th, 2011 with an opening party featuring live entertainment, giveaways, and a rare viewing of the old Dreamland pier bell, a 500-lb bell that was located on the tip of the Dreamland pier and rung to announce arrivals and departures (recently recovered from its 1911 resting place at the bottom of the ocean). This event is not to be missed, nor is the exhibition of The Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire, which is on display through March 2012.

Saturdays and Sundays, 12pm - 6pm

Cosmorama Admission - $4

Cosmorama Opening Night Party - $25

Coney Island Museum
1208 Surf Ave. (between Stillwell Ave. and West 12th Street)
Brooklyn, NY 11224
718-372-5159
By Subway - D, N, F, Q to Stillwell Ave. - Coney Island
On the web www.spectacularium.org
For further information, contact Aaron Beebe at (718) 372-5159 or email aaron@coneyisland.com