White City (amusement parks)


White City is the common name of dozens of amusement parks in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Inspired by the White City and Midway Plaisance sections of the World's Columbian Exhibition of 1893, the parks started gaining in popularity in the last few years of the 19th century. After the 1901 Pan-American Exposition inspired the first Luna Park in Coney Island, a frenzy in building amusement parks ensued in the first two decades of the 20th century.
Like their Luna Park and Electric Park cousins, a typical White City park featured a shoot-the-chutes and lagoon, a roller coaster, a midway, a Ferris wheel, games, and a pavilion. Some White City parks featured miniature railroads. Many cities had two of the Electric Park/Luna Park/White City triumvirate in their vicinity... with each trying to outdo the others with new attractions. The competition was fierce, often driving the electric parks out of business due to increased cost due to equipment upgrades and upkeep and increasing insurance costs. More than a few succumbed to fire. Only one park that was given the White City name continues to operate today: Denver's White City, opened in 1908, is currently Lakeside Amusement Park.

Origin

The enormously successful 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago attracted 26 million visitors and featured a section that is now commonly considered the first amusement park: a midway, the world's first Ferris wheel, a forerunner of the modern roller coaster, lighting and attractions powered by alternating current, and the debut of several kinds of foods in the United States, including hamburgers, shredded wheat, Cracker Jack, Juicy Fruit chewing gum, and pancakes made using Aunt Jemima pancake mix. The Zoopraxographical Hall was the first commercial theater. Ragtime composed and performed by Scott Joplin exposed millions of people to a new form of music and instantly became a staple for fairs and carnivals.
While the Midway Plaisance became the Exposition's main drawing card, it was not the primary purpose of the World's Fair in the eyes of its founders, who pictured it to be the beginning of a classical renaissance featuring electrically-lit white stucco buildings occupying the main court. While White City gave the park its visual identity, the throngs who attended the Columbian Exposition tended to collect at the Midway Plaisance. The World's Fair was destined to be remembered primarily for two ironic visions, that of the crowds at the Midway Plaisance and the architecture of the White City. Much of the Midway Plaisance reappeared in Coney Island's Steeplechase Park by the end of 1897.
While Steeplechase Park eventually became one of the earliest embodiments of an amusement park, Chicago had one to replace Midway Plaisance a year after the close of the Columbian Exposition, Paul Boyton's Water Chutes, featuring a shoot-the-chutes ride that wasn't present in the Columbian Exposition, but would soon become a staple of amusement parks to come. Paul Boyton's Water Chutes was the first amusement to charge admission when it opened in 1894; inspired by the immediate success of his Chicago park, he moved Water Chutes in 1896, a year after he started the similar Sea Lion Park in Coney Island.
Foretelling a fate similar to most amusement parks that followed, Paul Boyton's Water Chutes went out of business in 1908, in the face of increasing competition, mainly exhibition parks inspired by the Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and the emergence of trolley parks owned and operated by railroads and electric companies. In 1901, Boyton sold Sea Lion Park to Frederic Thompson and Elmer "Skip" Dundy, who operated "A Trip to the Moon" in both Buffalo and Steeplechase Park. Thompson and Dundy quickly redesigned Sea Lion Park and redubbed it Luna Park, which quickly added to the legend of Coney Island.

White City parks and the amusement park boom

In the half decade after the end of the Columbian Exposition, the American concept of the amusement park was starting to take hold, with the increased popularity of shoot-the-chutes rides, roller coasters were being erected in a frenetic pace. Railway companies, noticing the popularity of Midway Plaisance of the Columbian Exposition and the lack of railroad ridership on the weekends, constructed trolley parks as an effort to improve their bottom line. Power companies were starting to partner with railroad companies to create electric trolley companies... and construct Electric Parks.
As the end of the 19th century approached, a few exhibition parks - those inspired by the exhibits and midways of either the Columbian Exposition or the Pan-American Exposition - started to appear. Before the end of the year 1900, White City amusement parks were making their appearance in Philadelphia and Cleveland. Soon, some long-established parks changed their names to White City upon the addition of amusement rides and a midway. As the American amusement park was increasing in popularity in the first few years of the 1900s, the success of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition led to the first Luna Park in Coney Island in 1903... and an explosion of nearly identical amusement parks soon followed. There were roughly 250 amusements operating in the United States in 1899; the number almost tripled by 1905; and more than doubled again by 1919 - and these latter figures do not include the amusement parks that were opened and permanently closed by then.
While the White City in Chicago was not the first one of that name, it was certainly one of the most fondly remembered. Within years of its 1905 founding, dozens of White City parks dotted the United States. Although most White City parks were out of business by the end of the United States involvement in World War I, a few survived into the middle third of the 20th century.
The Chicago White City lasted until 1946; the Worcester park survived until 1960. Of the White City amusement parks, only one survives, the last exhibition park still standing: the Denver White City, built and opened in 1908, continues to this day as Lakeside Amusement Park. Although the name was officially changed decades ago, some members of the local populace still refer to Lakeside as "White City."

List of White City amusement parks

The following is a list of amusement parks that have had the name White City in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
was one of Cleveland, Ohio's, several amusement parks operating in the first decade of the Twentieth Century.|Postcard view of Cleveland's White City amusement park, one of several amusement parks operating in the Ohio city in the first decade of the Twentieth Century.