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Riverview Park (Chicago)
Riverview Park was an amusement park in Chicago, Illinois, which operated from 1904 to 1967. It was located on 74 acres (30 hectares) bound on the south by Belmont Avenue, on the east by Western Avenue, on the north by Lane Tech College Prep High School, and on the west by the North Branch of the Chicago River. It was located in the Roscoe Village neighborhood of Chicago's North Center community area.
Riverview was established in 1904 by William Schmidt, on the grounds of his private skeet shooting range. The Schmidt family owned and operated the park throughout its lifetime.
"Big Bill" Haywood, the Industrial Workers of the World leader, once spoke here to a crowd of almost 80,000 people.
Riverview was famous for The Bobs wooden roller coaster. Other popular coasters were The Comet, The Silver Flash, The Fireball and the Jetstream. Aladdin's Castle was a classic fun house with a collapsing stairway, mazes and turning barrel. Shoot the Chutes, Hades, the Rotor, Tilt-a-Whirl, Wild Mouse, the Mill on the Floss (Tunnel of Love), and Flying Turns were just a few of the many classic rides. "The Pair-O-Chutes at Riverview Park'll shake us up all day" is a line from the Beach Boys' song "Amusement Parks U.S.A." from their 1965 album, Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). There were over 120 rides in the park.[citation needed]
Riverview closed in 1967. Enduring urban myths describe the park's "seedy" atmosphere in the '60s as it became more integrated. Contemporaneous articles in black publications such as the Chicago Defender described black patrons being subject to latent and overt racism. The most overt was a longstanding attraction officially named "African Dip" and later truncated to "Dip", but unofficially called "Dunk the Nigger". It was not owned by Riverview, but by an outside concessionaire that rented space from the park. In the 1950s, the NAACP and Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko successfully lobbied to shut it down.
According to Victoria Wolcott, author of the 2012 book Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters:
“You see this thing a lot, when African Americans begin going in large numbers [to amusement parks], the parks are increasingly associated with danger and criminality...”
Chuck Wlodarczyk, author of Riverview: Gone But Not Forgotten, once performed shows about the park. He noted that people often approached him afterwards to report hearsay of someone raped in the restrooms by a black man. However, no actual record of such crimes exist. A Chicago Tribune article from late 1967 also blamed violence for the park's closure, although Wolcott said there was little evidence to support this.
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Riverview Park (Chicago)
Riverview Park was an amusement park in Chicago, Illinois, which operated from 1904 to 1967. It was located on 74 acres (30 hectares) bound on the south by Belmont Avenue, on the east by Western Avenue, on the north by Lane Tech College Prep High School, and on the west by the North Branch of the Chicago River. It was located in the Roscoe Village neighborhood of Chicago's North Center community area.
Riverview was established in 1904 by William Schmidt, on the grounds of his private skeet shooting range. The Schmidt family owned and operated the park throughout its lifetime.
"Big Bill" Haywood, the Industrial Workers of the World leader, once spoke here to a crowd of almost 80,000 people.
Riverview was famous for The Bobs wooden roller coaster. Other popular coasters were The Comet, The Silver Flash, The Fireball and the Jetstream. Aladdin's Castle was a classic fun house with a collapsing stairway, mazes and turning barrel. Shoot the Chutes, Hades, the Rotor, Tilt-a-Whirl, Wild Mouse, the Mill on the Floss (Tunnel of Love), and Flying Turns were just a few of the many classic rides. "The Pair-O-Chutes at Riverview Park'll shake us up all day" is a line from the Beach Boys' song "Amusement Parks U.S.A." from their 1965 album, Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). There were over 120 rides in the park.[citation needed]
Riverview closed in 1967. Enduring urban myths describe the park's "seedy" atmosphere in the '60s as it became more integrated. Contemporaneous articles in black publications such as the Chicago Defender described black patrons being subject to latent and overt racism. The most overt was a longstanding attraction officially named "African Dip" and later truncated to "Dip", but unofficially called "Dunk the Nigger". It was not owned by Riverview, but by an outside concessionaire that rented space from the park. In the 1950s, the NAACP and Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko successfully lobbied to shut it down.
According to Victoria Wolcott, author of the 2012 book Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters:
“You see this thing a lot, when African Americans begin going in large numbers [to amusement parks], the parks are increasingly associated with danger and criminality...”
Chuck Wlodarczyk, author of Riverview: Gone But Not Forgotten, once performed shows about the park. He noted that people often approached him afterwards to report hearsay of someone raped in the restrooms by a black man. However, no actual record of such crimes exist. A Chicago Tribune article from late 1967 also blamed violence for the park's closure, although Wolcott said there was little evidence to support this.