Park History
When someone mentions amusement park chains today, one tends to think of "Six Flags", "Cedar Fair" or "Paramount". But the idea of a park chain is nothing new. At the turn of the last century there was a huge international amusement park chain known as "Luna" which consisted of dozens of member parks, more than the current holdings of "Six Flags", "Cedar Fair", "Paramount", "Anheuser-Busch", and "Walt Disney" combined! One could find a Luna Park virtually anywhere in the world, such as in Coney Island New York, Berlin Germany, Cairo Egypt, and Takarazuka Japan. [TRIVIA: a least one Luna Park still exists in Sydney Australia.]
Of all the parks in the chain, the best was the Luna Park in Cleveland Ohio (as a testament to its popularity, you can regularly find postcards of the park being auctioned over the internet). The park was in fact so well respected, that for many years other park builders across the United States would visit just to study its layout and operation. Cleveland’s Luna Park was built by Frederick Ingersoll over the winter of 1904/05, the same winter he built a similar, but short lived, park in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. [TRIVIA: "Kennywood Park" pays tribute to Pittsburgh’s Luna Park with their Lost Kennywood theme area].
The park was built on approximately 31 acres of land on Cleveland’s East Side, bordered by Woodhill Road, Woodland Avenue, Ingersoll Road (now Mt. Carmel), and Ferncliff (now E. 110th Street).
The land was financed for $60,000 at 5% interest, and a group of investors raised $300,000 to construct the park. The neighborhood was middle class, semi-residential, and serviced by major transit arteries. The residents were initially of a mixed central European ethnicity, but by the Great War the area had evolved into a major Italian community.
Prior to the grand opening on 18 May 1905, Cleveland was flooded with promotional materials, and advertisements in newspapers such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer. This was necessary because there were many nearby amusement parks to take away customers, such as "Euclid Beach Park" and the nearly completed and quite lavish "White City" (Cleveland was at the time the sixth largest city in the United States, and the choices of entertainment venues reflected this). Luna Park differed from Euclid Beach Park in that Luna charged for both admission and rides (Euclid Beach charged only for rides). Euclid Beach was also a dry park, whereas Luna served beer at both the Café Napoleon and Rooftop Garden Restaurant (located on the upper floor of the Casino). Luna Park differed from (the jinxed) White City in that White City was painted all white, whereas Luna was painted in a rainbow of pinks, greens yellows, oranges, blues, and purples. Luna Park was open until midnight, and every structure was outlined in more than sixty-thousand colored light bulbs. A popular advertising slogan was "It’s Never Dark at Luna Park".
Although builders had worked feverishly, the park was not fully complete on opening day. The free open-air circus ring was not finished until two days later, and the Great Aerial Swing would not be ready until the middle of July. None-the-less, opening day was a rousing success, which included fireworks, band concerts, and even a spine-tingling (this was 1905 remember) free act featuring a lady leaping across a chasm in an automobile!