Nice. I haven't been there in a while; the place has not changed a bit. In the 1960's, the Freedomland amusement park was where those towers are now. Story goes that Freedomland was always planned as dodge. The real reason supposedly was to prepare the land for what you see, Co-op City. Something about the land not being legal to build apartments on if undeveloped. So they came up with the amusement park idea and always intended it to fail! In three seasons it did just that and shortly thereafter, Co-op City was built. Side note: Nelson Blount supplied two 2 foot gauge trains from his Edaville operation, former Maine narrow gauge. He got them back when the park closed. I have fond memories of Freedomland and the 2 footers. Sadly, no photo have I about them to share.
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Thanks for that fascinating insight, Dennis. That's one of the great things about researching captions and posting to RP after a photo is captured - there's often a fascinating back story and history well worth the time to seek and share with an audience. In this case - within the comments via both your blurb and a more extensive story with pics found here at "Hub Pages /Explore/"There Was Once an Amusement Park Here".
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