Historic Travel US - Visits to the Waterfront

This edition of the HISTORIC TRAVEL US Series features three films that each profile a different waterfront spectacle. In "Coney Island, USA," viewers get a chance to see Coney Island in its heyday. Filmed in 1952, the film captures the amusement park and beach as a place where people of all economic brackets fled to for entertainment and escape. When the subway system was finished in 1920, it opened Coney Island up to anyone who could afford the five-cent price of the train fare. This film illustrates the ways in which these new audiences affected the island, tranforming it from a favorite destination of the middle to upper classes to an open invitation. VISITS TO THE WATERFRONT then makes stops at the magnificent Niagara Falls, and the Manhattan Waterfront, the latter of which is captured in all its splendid and dilapidated glory.