6sqft:

“After World War II, Coney Island’s popularity began to fade, especially when Robert Moses made it his personal mission to replace the resort area’s amusements with low-income, high-rise residential developments. But ultimately, it was Fred Trump, Donald’s father, who sealed Steeplechase’s fate, going so far as to throw a demolition party when he razed the site in 1966 before it could receive landmark status.”

Trump invited guests to the demo party to throw bricks through the glass facade with its iconic grinning face. Fred also had plans to develop the former Luna Park site, but could not acquire government financing because he and his son were sued by the U.S. Government for racial descrimination. Instead, Robert Moses erected his customary forest of low income towers just north of the elevated subway line across the street from the amusement park.

“This sad event,” Charles Denson, the executive director of the Coney Island History Project, wrote in conjunction with the exhibition’s debut last summer, “was a vindictive and shameful act by a grown man behaving like a juvenile delinquent. It wasn’t business—it was personal. The desecration of an icon and the breaking of glass as public spectacle revealed a twisted personality that was unusual for even the most hard-bitten developers.”

“It’s almost the equivalent of ISIS tearing down religious icons, because the Steeplechase face was so iconic and really represented Coney Island,” Denson told me Saturday.

“Horrifying,” he called what Fred Trump did.

“Barbaric,” said Tricia Vita, the administrative director of the History Project.