In June of 1960 a 205-acre portion of land shaped like the outline of the continental United States opened in the Bronx. Freedomland, U.S.A., an historically-themed amusement park recreated events such as San Francisco earthquakes and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. One New York Times article called it, “an animated history book in which cowboys will soon fret, stagecoaches will be robbed, and Chicago will burn—every twenty minutes.”
This place is rich site of myth-making about America’s past and childhood. Mayor Wagner noted that Freedomland, “will educate our young people and our older citizens, and the newcomers to these shores to the greatness that is America.”
Freedomland closed after only five years, its mission to “teach the history of America” unfulfilled. In part, its demise was due to a constellation of economic factors, but it also failed because its message about American history lost relevance as the country entered the tumultuous 60s. By 1965, the neat, positive message about America-as- “Freedomland” made little sense to a Bronx that was burning, a city in social crisis and a country at war in Vietnam. This paper will explore the discord between what Freedomland hoped to teach and what in fact was “learned” in this rapidly changing social environment.
Despite its popularity, massive scale, and big dreams, Freedomland is largely forgotten in New York history today. The fact of its existence lives on primarily in the memories of those who visited it as children. This space held a rare mixture of nostalgia, imagination and political objectives billed as fun, educational and child-oriented popular culture.
About the presenterMolly Rosner
Molly Rosner is pursuing her PhD in American Studies. She received her master’s in Oral History from Columbia University, where she focused on the ways interview subjects employ myth and agency in their personal narratives. She has worked with the Apollo Theater’s Oral History Project, and as an educator at the Brooklyn Museum, teaching students of all ages in both the studio and the gallery setting. She has been a researcher for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center and writes for their blog. Molly has also worked as a freelance photographer and maintains a blog called “Brooklyn in Love and War,” which chronicles the history of WWII through love letters written by her grandmother — living as a single mother in Brooklyn — and her grandfather, a Hungarian immigrant, away in the Navy.