The New Student's Reference Work/Coney Island

Co′ney Island, southeast of Long Island and barely separated from it by a rivulet, is a narrow strip of sand, five miles long and half a mile wide. It has a fine beach, which is lined with long rows of huge wooden hotels. Its nearness to New York and Brooklyn makes it a popular resort. The east end is called Manhattan Beach, and its broad hotel-verandas, promenades and well-laid-out grounds are patronized by the well-to-do. There are two large music-halls, with fine acoustic properties, the galleries open to the air, where the best musicians of New York give cheap summer-concerts. The west end is the most democratic resort in America, and its beach, bathing-pavilions, open-air restaurants and music-halls, toboggan-rollers and iron lookout-tower, 300 feet high, are crowded all summer by thousands of the ill-housed and sweltering men, women and children of the cities. Steamboats land every few minutes during the day at the tubular iron pier, 1,000 feet long; three railroads join Coney Island to New York and Brooklyn; and one surface and one elevated road carry the pleasure-seekers from one end of the island to the other.