Idora Park
Encyclopedia
- This article deals with Idora Park of Oakland, California. For another park of the same name, see Idora Park, YoungstownIdora Park, YoungstownIdora Park was a northeastern Ohio amusement park popularly known as "Youngstown's Million Dollar Playground."Built by the Youngstown Park and Falls Street Railway Company, the park's expansion coincided with the growth of the South Side of Youngstown, Ohio, in the Fosterville neighborhood...
.
Idora Park was a 17.5 acres (70,820.1 m²) Victorian era trolley park
Trolley park
In 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...
in north Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
constructed in 1904 on the site of an informal park setting called Ayala Park on the north banks of Temescal Creek. Idora Park was leased by the Ingersoll Pleasure and Amusement Park Company that ran several eastern pleasure parks. What began as a pleasure ground in a rural setting for Sunday picnics evolved over time into the finest amusement park
Amusement park
thumb|Cinderella Castle in [[Magic Kingdom]], [[Disney World]]Amusement and theme parks are terms for a group of entertainment attractions and rides and other events in a location for the enjoyment of large numbers of people...
in the part of the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
known as the East Bay. Popularity of the park declined after the advent of the automobile and in 1929, Idora Park was razed.
History
The Realty Syndicate constructed the park in 1903 on a site of Ayala Park that included an opera house, ranchlands and greenhouses on the north banks of Temescal Creek. Rodney Ingersoll erected the first figure eight "sky railway" on the site in 1903. Idora Park was leased by the Ingersoll Pleasure and Amusement Park Company that ran several eastern pleasure parks and originally the name was to be Kennywood Park (the name of an amusement park in Pennsylvania).It was reported that Mr. Ingersoll named the park after his daughter, Idora, but there is some question about the name because of the park with the same name, Idora Park, located in Youngstown, Ohio. That park was said to have been named either by a contest winner claiming, "I adore it!" or after a local Indian tribe.
The Realty Syndicate also owned and operated what later became known as the Key System
Key System
The Key System was a privately owned company which provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from 1903 until 1960, when the system was sold to a newly formed public...
transit company, the Claremont Hotel
Claremont Resort
The Claremont Hotel Club & Spa is a historic hotel at the foot of Claremont Canyon in the Berkeley Hills, providing the resort with scenic views of San Francisco Bay. The hotel building is entirely in Oakland, bordering Berkeley....
and the Key Route Inn
Key Route Inn
The Key Route Inn was a major hotel in Oakland, California in the early decades of the 20th century. It was constructed by the Realty Syndicate of Francis "Borax" Smith and Frank C. Havens, a subsidiary of which was the Key Route transit system. The Inn first opened on May 7, 1907 straddling what...
. Major partners of the company were Frank C. Havens
Frank C. Havens
Frank Colton Havens was born into one of the founding families of Shelter Island, New York, the son of Wickham Havens of Sag Harbor.-Biography:...
and Francis "Borax" Smith, who earned his fortune in borax
Borax
Borax, also known as sodium borate, sodium tetraborate, or disodium tetraborate, is an important boron compound, a mineral, and a salt of boric acid. It is usually a white powder consisting of soft colorless crystals that dissolve easily in water.Borax has a wide variety of uses...
mining, subsequently investing it in transit, commercial and housing properties in the East Bay area.
Located on the block bounded by Telegraph Avenue
Telegraph Avenue
Telegraph Avenue is a street that begins, at its southernmost point, in the midst of the historic downtown district of Oakland, California, USA, and ends, at its northernmost point, at the southern edge of the University of California campus in Berkeley, California...
, Shattuck, 56th and 58th streets in the northern section of Oakland, Idora Park was famous for its Opera house. Idora Park was a walled-in park and admission to the park was 10 cents and it was open thirty or more weeks a year. A man named Bertrand York managed the park from 1911 until its demise in 1929.
After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, comic stars from the TivoliTheater relocated to Oakland and renamed themselves the Idora Park Comic Opera Company. Shows like The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
, The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
and The Wizard of the Nile
The Wizard of the Nile
The Wizard of the Nile was a burlesque operetta in three acts, composed by Victor Herbert to a libretto by Harry B. Smith.Herbert's second operetta after Prince Ananias, The Wizard of the Nile was his first real success...
were performed under the direction of Paul Steindorff in a large wooden opera house called the Wigwam Theater. Also after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
hundreds of displaced people camped at the park and the Pacific Coast League
Pacific Coast League
The Pacific Coast League is a minor-league baseball league operating in the Western, Midwestern and Southeastern United States. Along with the International League and the Mexican League, it is one of three leagues playing at the Triple-A level, which is one step below Major League Baseball.The...
of baseball relocated to Idora Park. In 1919 when Oakland's own 159th Regiment returned from France, the Park was opened to the fighting men at no charge.
Rides
Idora Park rides cost 5 cents. Many of the rides were advertised as being the "largest," or the "first."- Circle Swing - a large round flat disk or bench suspended by chains from a central pole, people could sit on the bench to swing
- Social Whirl - a platform inside a structure which people would sit on until the centrifugal force pushed them off
- Barrel-of-fun
- Trip through Hades
- Helter Skelter - a slide type ride
- The ChutesShoot-the-ChutesShoot-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....
- Miniature Railway Train - a small steam powered railroad that carried people through the park
- Haunted swings
- Ferris wheelFerris wheelA Ferris wheel is a nonbuilding structure consisting of a rotating upright wheel with passenger cars attached to the rim in such a way that as the wheel turns, the cars are kept upright, usually by gravity.Some of the largest and most modern Ferris wheels have cars mounted on...
- Touring cars
- Circle Wave
- Flying Swing - a swings (ride) with cars suspended from a central point that turned fast enough for the cars to become elevated (similar to the Chair-O-PlanesChair-O-PlanesThe Chair-O-Planes is a fairground ride that is a variation on the carousel in which the chairs are suspended on chains from the rotating top of the carousel...
ride) - The Tickler - appears to be a ride with a car on a twisting track
- A Merry-go-round
- The Mountain Slide - appears to be a slide down through a mountain
- Auto Race Course - a circular track where two full size, electrically powered automobiles, filled with people, would race each other to an exciting finish.
Rides were renamed regularly and one finds titles such as Dodge 'em, The Whip, Over the Top, Race through the Clouds and the Magic Carpet.
Roller coasters
The park featured five traditional roller coasterRoller 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...
s during its history:
- IngersollFrederick IngersollFrederick Ingersoll was an inventor, designer, and builder who created the world's first chain of amusement parks and whose manufacturing company built 277 roller coasters, fueling the popularity of trolley parks in the first third of the Twentieth Century...
Figure 8Figure 8 roller coasterA Figure 8 roller coaster is the generic name given to any roller coaster where the train runs through a figure 8 shaped course before returning to the boarding station. This design was one of the first designs to be featured in roller coaster design, along with the out and back roller coaster...
Toboggan, 1906-1916. - L.A. Thompson Scenic Railway, 1906-1921. (owned and operated by the Thompson Company).
- Race Thru The Clouds, a twin track coaster, dates unknown.
- The Big (or Giant) Dipper, 1922-1928 John A. Miller designed at a cost of $60,000
- Skyrocket (or Thunderbolt), also designed by Miller, 1927-1928.
Attractions
Idora Park boasted the first outdoor public address system built by MagnavoxMagnavox
Magnavox is a US electronics company founded by Edwin Pridham and Peter L. Jensen, who invented the moving-coil loudspeaker in 1915 at their lab in Napa, California. They formed Magnavox in 1917 in order to market their inventions....
, the first radio theater in the West and a huge searchlight—like many things at Idora Park—reputed to be the largest in the world.
Idora Park was a walled-in park that had a zoo, an ostrich farm, animal shows, a dance hall, racetrack, a huge outdoor amphitheater, a Japanese garden, bear grotto and a main street called the Glad Way, Penny Arcade, photo gallery and shooting gallery. In 1904 a ballpark with a 3000 seat double deck grandstand was erected and after the '06 earthquake the Pacific Coast Baseball League relocated there. The park had the largest roller skating rink in California and largest West of Chicago that rented clamp-on skates and had a bandstand in its center, and a Mountain slide that sported a firework volcanic display on Saturday nights and balloon ascensions wherein the husband and wife acrobat team of Frank and Carrie Hamilton parachuteted down after their act.
One attraction was "The Laying Hens" where you threw a ball at a wooden hen sitting on a barnyard fence and if you hit it, it fell over and delivered a hard-boiled egg for you to eat. The park offered electric souvenirs, so-called "Jap" ping-pong, a musical arcade, dancing pavilion, Roof Garden and Grill, lunch counters, open air concerts and numerus refreshment booths.
Entertainment
VaudevilleVaudeville
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...
performers used Idora Park stages; famous stars who emerged from Oakland included Hobart Bosworth
Hobart Bosworth
Hobart Bosworth was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer.-Early life:Born Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth, he was a direct descendant of Miles Standish and John and Priscilla Alden on his father's side and of New York's Van Zandt family, the first Dutch settlers to land in the New...
, a widely known leading man in the early days of film, Fatty Arbuckle
Fatty Arbuckle
Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. Starting at the Selig Polyscope Company he eventually moved to Keystone Studios where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd...
and possibly Lon Chaney
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...
. It has been said that Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
and Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
improved their skating skills at the Idora Park skating rink described (in 1913) as the largest in the world. Something called the Cabaret de la Mort existed for a time. Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
's daughter Becky describes trips to Idora Park with her father (link below).
Aimee Semple McPherson
Aimee Semple McPherson
Aimee Semple McPherson , also known as Sister Aimee, was a Canadian-American Los Angeles, California evangelist and media celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s. She founded the Foursquare Church...
held the largest outdoor baptism to date before 10,000 spectators in the Idora Park swimming tanks after returning from the "Orient" following the death of her husband, Robert James Semple from
dysentery.
Refreshments
Idora Park was famous for its crispy sour milk waffles (a recipe for which was later published in the Oakland Tribune). Food at the park, if you didn't bring your own, was available; ice cream, popcorn and Coney Island "Red Hots" were a nickel, whiskey a dime, Busch Beer from St. Louis was five cents. The Park's restaurant featured full course meals for seventy-five cents to one dollar and soda pop came in 12 ounce bottles.Demise
Late in life, Idora Park was eclipsed by the rise of the automobile and Neptune Beach, CaliforniaNeptune Beach, California
Neptune Beach was an amusement park on the shore of San Francisco Bay in the city of Alameda, California. The park was served by the Southern Pacific Transportation Company and ferries from San Francisco. It operated from 1917 until it closed in 1939....
in Alameda, California
Alameda, California
Alameda is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located on Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island, and is adjacent to Oakland in the San Francisco Bay. The Bay Farm Island portion of the city is adjacent to the Oakland International Airport. At the 2010 census, the city had a...
. In 1929, Idora Park was razed and a plan to develop the "Central Square", an apartment and business complex, was announced. But the depression intervened and a variety of small Storybook Houses
Storybook houses
A Storybook House refers to an architectural style popularized in the 1920s in England and America.The storybook style is a nod toward Hollywood design technically called Provincial Revivalism and more commonly called Fairy Tale or Hansel and Gretel...
and worker housing apartment blocks were constructed on the 17 acres (68,796.6 m²) site. This is said to be the first neighborhood with undergrounded utilities in the west.