Electric Park, Kansas City
Encyclopedia
Electric Park was the name shared by two amusement parks in Kansas City, Missouri
, USA that were constructed by Joseph Heim
(then president of the Heim Brothers Brewery) and his brothers Michael and Ferdinand Jr. and run by them. The first was built next to the Heim Beer brewery in 1899; the second, a larger one, was built and opened for the public in 1907 and remained in operation until the end of the 1925 season. Animator and entrepreneur Walt Disney
cited the second Kansas City Electric Park as his primary inspiration for the design of the first modern theme park, Disneyland.
Open from 1899 to 1906, the first Electric Park proved to be an immediate success as one of the world's first full-time amusement parks. Featuring a Shoot-the-Chutes
ride (called the Mystic Chute), the park also had a beer garden
with beer piped directly from the brewery next door. Eventually, the carefully groomed grounds were too small to sustain the park's popularity; at the end of the 1906 season, some of the rides were dismantled and moved to a new location to the south.
Much of the grounds lay neglected or abandoned for the next 19 years. in 1925, part of the plot (near the corner of Montgall and Rochester) was deeded to city of Kansas City for use as a neighborhood playground
. Opened in a 1 August 1925 ceremony, the park offered "Pet Night", in which children won prizes for displaying the largest, smallest, and the most deformed dog. Another day saw swimsuits awarded to boys who created wood carving
s from dead trees.
, this time at 46th Street and the Paseo, opened 19 May 1907. Like the first one, it was a trolley park (this time served by the Trooste Avenue, Woodland Avenue, and Rockhill lines of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company), but the successor was one of the largest (if not the largest) ever to be called Electric Park. It had "band concert
s, vaudeville
, Electric Fountain, ballroom
, natatorium
, German village
, alligator farm
, chutes
, Dips Coaster
, Norton slide, penny parlors
, novelty stand, Japanese rolling ball, scenic railway, pool
room, a Hale's Tour of the World, Electric Studio, boat tours, old mill
, a Temple of Mirth, Flying Lady, Double Whirl, Circle Swing, soda fountain and ice cream shops, knife rack, doll rack, shooting gallery
, air gun
gallery, giant teeter
, boating
, outdoor swimming, carousel
, clubhouse cafe
, Casino 5 cent theater, fortune telling and palmistry, covered promenade and horseless buggy garage." Souvenir
s from the park touted it as "Kansas City
's Coney Island
," which it matched by having 100,000 light bulbs adorn its buildings.
In 1911, the second Kansas City park attracted one million people, averaging 8000 paying customers per day that season.
Much of the second Electric Park in Kansas City burned to the ground in 1925. The fire was witnessed by a young Walter Cronkite
, who later wrote
Despite the devastating blaze, the park maintained its operating hours as its theater and its aquarium
remained open for the remainder of its last year. In the final days of 1925, Electric Park inaugurated its Coin Carnival
to replace its destroyed midway
. The two weeks before its final closing, Electric Park celebrated its own Mardi Gras
after the Heim family decided to sell the land. On 1 September 1925, a fireworks
exhibition punctuated the park's last closing ceremony.
moved his family to Kansas City in 1911, a nine-year-old Walt
and his younger sister Ruth became regular visitors to the second Electric Park, which was a mere 15 blocks from their new home. While the Kansas City park was inspired by the original White City in the 1893 Columbian Exposition
(for which Elias was a construction worker), Walt later took many features of the Kansas City Electric Park (including a train whose track ringed the park grounds and the daily fireworks at closing time) and incorporated them into Disneyland when he started developing the plans for the layout of the park that he opened in 1955.
Unlike many of its contemporaries, the Electric Park's grounds were meticulously maintained with landscaping designed to accentuate the park's rides and other attractions, a trait that Disney insisted to be maintained in Disneyland. Electric Park's "Living Statutory"'s electric procession featured young women emerging from a fountain
onto a platform while bathed in various colored lights. Disney's entrances featured structures similar in design and structure to that of Electric Park's Monkey Cage Gazebo
. In fact, most of the attractions that graced Disney's childhood park had similar counterparts in the California park that he opened three decades later.
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
, USA that were constructed by Joseph Heim
Joseph Heim
Gefreiter Joseph Heim was a former German Luftwaffe flying ace. He is credited with five aerial victories flying the Messerschmitt Me-262 jet fighter, making him one of only 28 jet aces of World War II. He was killed in action on 10 April 1945....
(then president of the Heim Brothers Brewery) and his brothers Michael and Ferdinand Jr. and run by them. The first was built next to the Heim Beer brewery in 1899; the second, a larger one, was built and opened for the public in 1907 and remained in operation until the end of the 1925 season. Animator and entrepreneur Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
cited the second Kansas City Electric Park as his primary inspiration for the design of the first modern theme park, Disneyland.
First park
The Heim brothers built the first Electric Park in land adjacent to the Heim Brothers Brewery (at the time the largest brewery in the world) in East Bottoms. The amusement park was bounded by Montgall, Chestnut, Nicholson, and Rochester Avenues.Open from 1899 to 1906, the first Electric Park proved to be an immediate success as one of the world's first full-time amusement parks. Featuring a Shoot-the-Chutes
Shoot-the-Chutes
Shoot-the-Chutes is an amusement ride consisting of a flat-bottomed boat that slides down a ramp or inside a flume into a lagoon. Unlike a log flume, a Shoot-the-Chutes generally has larger boats and one single drop....
ride (called the Mystic Chute), the park also had a beer garden
Beer garden
Beer garden is an open-air area where beer, other drinks and local food are served. The concept originates from and is most common in Southern Germany...
with beer piped directly from the brewery next door. Eventually, the carefully groomed grounds were too small to sustain the park's popularity; at the end of the 1906 season, some of the rides were dismantled and moved to a new location to the south.
Much of the grounds lay neglected or abandoned for the next 19 years. in 1925, part of the plot (near the corner of Montgall and Rochester) was deeded to city of Kansas City for use as a neighborhood playground
Playground
A playground or play area is a place with a specific design for children be able to play there. It may be indoors but is typically outdoors...
. Opened in a 1 August 1925 ceremony, the park offered "Pet Night", in which children won prizes for displaying the largest, smallest, and the most deformed dog. Another day saw swimsuits awarded to boys who created wood carving
Wood carving
Wood carving is a form of working wood by means of a cutting tool in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object...
s from dead trees.
Second park
The second Kansas City Electric ParkElectric Park
Electric Park was a name shared by dozens of amusement parks in the United States that were constructed as trolley parks and owned by electric companies and streetcar companies...
, this time at 46th Street and the Paseo, opened 19 May 1907. Like the first one, it was a trolley park (this time served by the Trooste Avenue, Woodland Avenue, and Rockhill lines of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company), but the successor was one of the largest (if not the largest) ever to be called Electric Park. It had "band concert
Concert
A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band...
s, vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, Electric Fountain, ballroom
Ballroom
A ballroom is a large room inside a building, the designated purpose of which is holding formal dances called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions contain one or more ballrooms...
, natatorium
Natatorium
A natatorium is a term given for a building containing a swimming pool. In Latin, a cella natatoria was a swimming pool in its own building, although it is sometimes also used to refer to any indoor pool even if not housed in a dedicated building...
, German village
German Village
German Village is a historic neighborhood just south of downtown Columbus. It was settled by a large number of German immigrants in the early-to-mid-19th century, who at one time comprised as much as a third of the population of the entire city...
, alligator farm
Alligator farm
An alligator farm or crocodile farm is an establishment for breeding and raising of crocodilians in order to produce meat, leather, and other goods...
, chutes
Shoot-the-Chutes
Shoot-the-Chutes is an amusement ride consisting of a flat-bottomed boat that slides down a ramp or inside a flume into a lagoon. Unlike a log flume, a Shoot-the-Chutes generally has larger boats and one single drop....
, Dips Coaster
Roller coaster
The roller coaster is a popular amusement ride developed for amusement parks and modern theme parks. LaMarcus Adna Thompson patented the first coasters on January 20, 1885...
, Norton slide, penny parlors
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
, novelty stand, Japanese rolling ball, scenic railway, pool
Billiards
Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...
room, a Hale's Tour of the World, Electric Studio, boat tours, old mill
Old Mill (ride)
An Old Mill is a type of amusement park ride with unaccompanied boats on guided tracks floating through dark tunnels. These themed dark rides originated in the late 19th century....
, a Temple of Mirth, Flying Lady, Double Whirl, Circle Swing, soda fountain and ice cream shops, knife rack, doll rack, shooting gallery
Carnival game
A carnival game is a game of chance or skill that can be seen at a traveling carnival, charity fund raiser, amusement park, or on a state and county fair midway....
, air gun
Air gun
An air gun is a rifle , pistol , or shotgun that fires projectiles by means of compressed air or other gas, in contrast to a firearm, which burns a propellant. Most air guns use metallic projectiles as ammunition. Air guns that only use plastic projectiles are classified as airsoft...
gallery, giant teeter
Seesaw
A seesaw is a long, narrow board pivoted in the middle so that, as one end goes up, the other goes down.-Mechanics:Mechanically a seesaw is a lever and fulcrum....
, boating
Boating
Boating is the leisurely activity of travelling by boat, or the recreational use of a boat whether powerboats, sailboats, or man-powered vessels , focused on the travel itself, as well as sports activities, such as fishing or water skiing...
, outdoor swimming, carousel
Carousel
A carousel , or merry-go-round, is an amusement ride consisting of a rotating circular platform with seats for riders...
, clubhouse cafe
Café
A café , also spelled cafe, in most countries refers to an establishment which focuses on serving coffee, like an American coffeehouse. In the United States, it may refer to an informal restaurant, offering a range of hot meals and made-to-order sandwiches...
, Casino 5 cent theater, fortune telling and palmistry, covered promenade and horseless buggy garage." Souvenir
Souvenir
A souvenir , memento, keepsake or token of remembrance is an object a person acquires for the memories the owner associates with it. The term souvenir brings to mind the mass-produced kitsch that is the main commodity of souvenir and gift shops in many tourist traps around the world...
s from the park touted it as "Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
's Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
," which it matched by having 100,000 light bulbs adorn its buildings.
In 1911, the second Kansas City park attracted one million people, averaging 8000 paying customers per day that season.
Much of the second Electric Park in Kansas City burned to the ground in 1925. The fire was witnessed by a young Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
, who later wrote
Despite the devastating blaze, the park maintained its operating hours as its theater and its aquarium
Aquarium
An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...
remained open for the remainder of its last year. In the final days of 1925, Electric Park inaugurated its Coin Carnival
Video arcade
An amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables...
to replace its destroyed midway
Midway (fair)
A midway at a fair is the location where amusement rides, entertainment and fast food booths are concentrated....
. The two weeks before its final closing, Electric Park celebrated its own Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras
The terms "Mardi Gras" , "Mardi Gras season", and "Carnival season", in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday...
after the Heim family decided to sell the land. On 1 September 1925, a fireworks
Pyrotechnics
Pyrotechnics is the science of using materials capable of undergoing self-contained and self-sustained exothermic chemical reactions for the production of heat, light, gas, smoke and/or sound...
exhibition punctuated the park's last closing ceremony.
Walt Disney and the Kansas City Electric Park
After Elias DisneyElias Disney
Elias Disney was the Canadian father of Roy Disney and Walt Disney.-Early life:Disney was born in the rural village of Bluevale, Ontario, Canada, to Irish-born immigrant Kepple Elias Disney and Mary Richardson who was of English descent. He became a farmer and a businessman with little success...
moved his family to Kansas City in 1911, a nine-year-old Walt
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
and his younger sister Ruth became regular visitors to the second Electric Park, which was a mere 15 blocks from their new home. While the Kansas City park was inspired by the original White City in the 1893 Columbian Exposition
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. Chicago bested New York City; Washington, D.C.; and St...
(for which Elias was a construction worker), Walt later took many features of the Kansas City Electric Park (including a train whose track ringed the park grounds and the daily fireworks at closing time) and incorporated them into Disneyland when he started developing the plans for the layout of the park that he opened in 1955.
Unlike many of its contemporaries, the Electric Park's grounds were meticulously maintained with landscaping designed to accentuate the park's rides and other attractions, a trait that Disney insisted to be maintained in Disneyland. Electric Park's "Living Statutory"'s electric procession featured young women emerging from a fountain
Fountain
A fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air either to supply drinking water or for decorative or dramatic effect....
onto a platform while bathed in various colored lights. Disney's entrances featured structures similar in design and structure to that of Electric Park's Monkey Cage Gazebo
Gazebo
A gazebo is a pavilion structure, sometimes octagonal, that may be built, in parks, gardens, and spacious public areas. Gazebos are freestanding or attached to a garden wall, roofed, and open on all sides; they provide shade, shelter, ornamental features in a landscape, and a place to rest...
. In fact, most of the attractions that graced Disney's childhood park had similar counterparts in the California park that he opened three decades later.
See also
- Electric ParkElectric ParkElectric Park was a name shared by dozens of amusement parks in the United States that were constructed as trolley parks and owned by electric companies and streetcar companies...
- Trolley parkTrolley parkIn the United States, trolley parks, which started in the 19th century, were picnic and recreation areas along or at the ends of streetcar lines in most of the larger cities. These were precursors to amusement parks. These trolley parks were created by the streetcar companies to give people a...
- Luna Park
- Walt DisneyWalt DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
- White City