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By JIM DOYLE Beginning in June, if you get tired of San Francisco's exotic Chinatown, you can stroll over to Chicago and help put the fire out. Or take a quick paddle wheel steamboat ride through the Great Lakes that is guaranteed to get you back in time for dinner. This sort of thing will become possible, at least figuratively, on June 19. That’s when Freedomland, the East Coast's answer to Disney land, opens in New York. Freedomland is a 65-million-dol lar amusement area rapidly near ing completion in New York City. It will duplicate, in miniature but in authentic detail, 16 historic areas of the United States. It will have 41 separate exhibits and more than 30 rides ranging from stage coaches to a space shop that will take you around the world in six minutes. THE HUGE PROJECT, being built on a site shaped like the Unit ed States, represents a new con cept in mass entertainment, a trend away from the Coney Island type of amusement park, with its thrill rides, games of chance and carni val shows. It is the brain child of a young Texan, C. V. Wood, who pioneered the idea in Disneyland and of Ted Raynor, a Chicago lawyer. “We feel that people expect a lit tle more than hot dogs and roller coasters these days,’ says Raynor, who is president of the Freedom land Co. ‘‘We decided on a unified show built around a theme. “We chose American history, or Americana, if you wish, from more than 20 suggested themes because of the growing interest in the sub ject. “But we didn’t want to build a huge museum. The whole idea is amusement. It’s educational, but primarily it's a place for the fam ily to have fun. There won't be any rollercoasters but there will be rides. You can get shot at by Indians on a trip through the Pacific Northwest, or watch the San Francisco earth quake in perfect safety, or tour New England in a 1910 model auto mobile or take a trip in an ore bucket suspended from a cable from a Colorado silver mine over the Rocky Mountains to the Dakota territories as they were in the Pony Express days. THE MAGNITUDE of the project is hard to grasp. The 80 acre amusement area (of a 203 acre site) will comfortably accommo date an audience of 90,000 people daily; its restaurants can feed 35, 000 people an hour and a “cast” of 2,000 attendants in authentic cos tume will man the rides, the shows and the shops (selling merchandise appropriate to the area and period of each exhibit). Such things as burning Chicago every 20 minutes, destroying San Francisco, and fighting the Civi War require a lot of technical and artistic know-how. Not surprising ly, much of it comes from Holly wood. More than 200 designers, 19 of them Oscar winners, worked on the various exhibits. Every effort was made to be faithful to history and Freedom land, even in the planning stage, drew plaudits from educators and historians all over the country. Some concessions have had to be made, of course. For example, the five Civil War battles re-enacted are grouped together rather than spread across the miniature United States, North American Newspaper Alliance
Newspaper Details
Salem News
Salem, Ohio, US
Mon, May 02, 1960
Page 4
Full Page
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USA 13 Sep 2026
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