Coney Island
Coney Island is a neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to the south and west, and Gravesend to the north and includes the subsection of Sea Gate on its west. More broadly, the Coney Island peninsula consists of Coney Island proper, Sea Gate, Brighton Beach, and Manhattan Beach. This was formerly the westernmost of the Outer Barrier islands on the southern shore of Long Island, but in the early 20th century it became connected to the rest of Long Island by land fill.
The origin of Coney Island's name is disputed, but the area was originally part of the colonial town of Gravesend. By the mid-19th century it had become a seaside resort, and by the late 19th century, amusement parks had also been built at the location. The attractions reached a historical peak during the first half of the 20th century. However, they declined in popularity after World War II and, following years of neglect, several structures were torn down. Various redevelopment projects were proposed for Coney Island in the 1970s through the 2000s, though most of these were not carried out. The area was revitalized with the opening of the venue now known as Maimonides Park in 2001 and several amusement rides starting in the 2010s.
Coney Island had around 32,000 residents as of the 2020 United States census. The neighborhood is ethnically diverse, and the neighborhood's poverty rate of 27% is slightly higher than that of the city as a whole.
Coney Island is part of Brooklyn Community District 13, and its primary ZIP Code is 11224. It is patrolled by the 60th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Fire services are provided by the New York City Fire Department's Engine 245/Ladder 161/Battalion 43 and Engine 318/Ladder 166. Politically, Coney Island is represented by the New York City Council's 47th District. The area is well served by the New York City Subway and local bus routes, and contains several public elementary and middle schools.
Geography and climate
The Encyclopedia of New York City considers the area west of Ocean Parkway to be part of the Coney Island neighborhood. The neighborhood is situated on the western portion of the Coney Island peninsula, located on the western end of Long Island lying to the west of the Outer Barrier islands along Long Island's southern shore. The peninsula is about long and wide. It extends into Lower New York Bay with Sheepshead Bay to its northeast, Gravesend Bay and Coney Island Creek to its northwest, and the main part of Brooklyn to its north. At its highest it is above sea level. Coney Island was formerly an actual island, separated from greater Brooklyn by Coney Island Creek, and was the westernmost of the Outer Barrier islands. A large section of the creek was filled in the 1920s and 1930s, turning the island into a peninsula.The perimeter of Coney Island features manmade structures designed to maintain its current shape. The beaches are currently not a natural feature; the sand that is naturally supposed to replenish Coney Island is cut off by the jetty at Breezy Point, Queens. Sand has been redeposited on the beaches via beach nourishment since the construction of Riegelmann Boardwalk in 1922–1923, and is held in place by around two dozen groynes. A large sand-replenishing project along Coney Island and Brighton Beach took place in the 1990s. Sheepshead Bay at the peninsula's northeast corner is, for the most part, enclosed in bulkheads. Two major parks, Kaiser Park and Coney Island Creek Park, are located on the northwest side of the peninsula along Coney Island Creek. A 2023 study found that Coney Island was sinking at a rate of about per year, making it among the fastest-sinking locations in New York City; this is mainly because parts of the neighborhood were created by land reclamation.
Coney Island has a humid subtropical climate and the hardiness zone is 7b.
Name
The original Native American inhabitants of the region, the Lenape, called this area Narrioch, possibly meaning "land without shadows" or "always in light" in reference to its sunlit south-facing beaches. A second possible meaning is "point" or "corner of land". The "island" was originally several smaller historical islands, each being given a name by Dutch settlers, with the westernmost sand spit or point named Conyne Eylandt in early-17th-century Dutch maps, starting with the 1639 Manatus Map.There is no clear historical consensus on how the island got the name "Coney Island", in regular use in the first half of the 19th century with the advent of regular ferry service to the island, but several theories have been put forward. One possible etymology is from a Native American tribe, the Konoh or Konoi, who once inhabited the island. A second theory suggests that it was distortion of the name of Henry Hudson's second mate on the Halve Maen, John Colman, who was slain by natives on the 1609 expedition. A third posits that late 18th century Irish captain Peter O'Connor named it after Coney Island in County Sligo, Ireland, which has a rabbit population. In Irish coinín is the word used for a rabbit. Yet other theories suggest a Dutch etymology: one theory holds that the name had come from Conyn, the surname of a family of Dutch settlers who lived there, and another suggests that it came from the Dutch word for rabbit, konijn, derived from a purported large population of wild rabbits on the island".
There is little evidence for each origin theory, and there are conflicts between the pieces of evidence that do exist. The most popular idea is the translation of the Dutch word for "rabbit" into the English word coney, but that has its detractors and counter explanations. In 1816, politician and U.S. Founding Father Egbert Benson presented a treatise on New York place names and said it was "Conyn's Island", after the Dutch surname, and noted "there are already symptoms of the beginning of a tradition that it once abounded in Rabbits". Other historians claim that rabbits were introduced to the island only after it was settled. The 19th century also saw the heavily Irish New York Tammany Hall political machine controlling development of the island, and they may have gotten the name from the island in County Sligo rather than any tale of a rabbit population.
History
Early settlement
was the first European explorer to sight the island of Narrioch during his expeditions to the area in 1527 and 1529. He was subsequently followed by Henry Hudson. Anthony Janszoon van Salee was the first New Netherland settler to acquire land adjacent to Coney Island, in 1639. The Native American population in the area dwindled as the Dutch settlement grew and the entire southern tier of present-day Brooklyn, from Gowanus Creek to Coney Island to Gerritsen Creek, was purchased in 1645 from the Native Americans in exchange for goods. The goods were not recorded in the deed, but later accounts mention a gun, a blanket, and a kettle.In 1644, a colonist named Guysbert Op Dyck was given a land patent for 88 acres of land in what became the town of Gravesend, on the southwestern shore of Brooklyn. The land patent included Conyne Island, an island just off the southwestern shore of the town of Gravesend, as well as Conyne Hook, a peninsula just east of the island. Both became part of Gravesend when its first town charter was granted a year later, in 1645. East of Conyne Hook was the largest section of island called Gysbert's, Guysbert's, or Guisbert's Island, containing most of the arable land and extending east through today's Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach. This was officially the first official real estate transaction for the island.
Op Dyck never occupied his land, and in 1661 he sold it off to Dick De Wolf. The land's new owner banned Gravesend residents from using Guisbert's Island and built a salt-works on the land, provoking outrage among Gravesend livestock herders. New Amsterdam was transferred to the English in 1664, and four years later, the English Governor created a new charter for Gravesend that excluded Coney Island. Subsequently, Guisbert's Island was divided into plots meted out to several dozen settlers. However, in 1685, the island became part of Gravesend again as a result of a new charter with the Native Americans.
At the time of European settlement, the land that makes up the present-day Coney Island was divided across several separate islands. All of these islands were part of the outer barrier on the southern shore of Long Island, and their land areas and boundaries changed frequently. Only the westernmost island was called Coney Island; it currently makes up part of Sea Gate. At the time, it was a 1.25-mile shifting sandspit with a detached island at its western end extending into Lower New York Bay. In a 1679–1680 journal, Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter noted that "Conijnen Eylandt" was fully separated from the rest of Brooklyn. The explorers observed that "Nobody lives upon it, but it is used in winter for keeping cattle, horses, oxen, hogs and others."
By the early 18th century, the town of Gravesend was periodically granting seven-year-long leases to freeholders, who would then have the exclusive use of Coney Hook and Coney Island. In 1734, a road to Coney Hook was laid out. Thomas Stillwell, a prominent Gravesend resident who was the freeholder for Coney Island and Coney Hook at the time, proposed to build a ditch through Coney Hook so it would be easier for his cattle to graze. He convinced several friends in the nearby town of Jamaica to help him in this effort, telling them that the creation of such a ditch would allow them to ship goods from Jamaica Bay to New York Harbor without having to venture out into the ocean. In 1750, the "Jamaica Ditch" was dug through Coney Hook from Brown's Creek in the west to Hubbard's Creek in the east. The creation of the canal turned Coney Hook into a detached island called Pine Island, so named due to the woods on it.
Each island was separated by an inlet that could only be crossed at low tide. By the end of the 18th century, the ongoing shifting of sand along the barrier islands had closed up the inlets to the point that residents began filling them in and joining them as one island. Development of Coney Island was slow until the 19th century due to land disputes, the American Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812.