Our class was one of the last to have grown up with Olympic Park. The amusement park which straddled the border of Irvington and Maplewood existed from 1887 to 1965.

Olympic Park started as a German-style beer garden and picnic area called Becker’s Woods, back when Irvington was a bucolic suburb of Newark. Irvington had a large German population at that time. People from the city could escape the summer heat for the shade and cold beer and park setting which also offered music and entertainment.

It was renamed Olympic Park after the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis when Olympic-fever was current. It quickly grew into New Jersey’s largest amusement park. For a time it was nicknamed “Newark’s Coney Island,” and with no ocean, it compensated with the nation’s largest fresh-water swimming pool.

To be an Olympic Park it needed an Olympic-size swimming pool, but the park owners, Anthony J. and Henry A. Guenther,  lacked the capital to built one. Finally, in 1922 a group of enthusiastic New York investors formed the Olympic Natatorium Corporation and signed a twenty-year lease with the Guenthers. They sold $220,000 worth of stock, mainly to small investors in Newark and Irvington, and a share entitled you a slice of the profits and twenty years use of the pool at no cost.

Construction of the pool began on February 19, 1923. They excavated 26,000 cubic yards of earth and rock from the area of the park that had been a racetrack. The pool was olympian at  400 feet long and 200 feet wide with a depth ranging from 9.5 feet to less than a foot. It held  3.75 million gallons of filtered chlorinated water. It was said to be able to accommodate 4000 bathers at one time. (And a few times I was there, it seemed like a 4K crowd.) It was finished that summer.

That first version of the pool had 7000 lights for night bathing, 1000 individual bathhouses, 3000 lockers, and bleachers seating 5000 people in an amphitheater around three sides of the pool. It even had a sand “beach” that was 165 feet long by 135 feet long made with 18,050 tons of sand from Rockaway Beach, NY.

It took ten days to fill the pool for the opening on July 4, 1923, and the highlight was a water carnival that starred world champion swimmer Johnny Weismuller, who was known as Tarzan in the movies.

Moving up to our decades, a November 25, 1950 hurricane with gusts up to 108 MPH caused approximately $125,000 in damages to the park. The Jack Rabbit roller coaster toppled to the ground. It was rebuilt as the “Jet Star” coaster and it opened for the 1951 season and was in operation until the park’s closing.

The park’s rides and attractions in the 195s and 60s included: a roller coaster, whip, cuddle-up, Ferris wheel, dude ranch, donkey ride, Twister dark ride and another twister type of ride named Rock-n-Roll, the pony track, auto scooter, caterpillar, auto speedway, octopus, U-drive motorboats, Looper, Airplanes, Haunted Castle, Bug, Rocket, Flying Scooters and the walk-thru dark ride (Crackpot), plus a 9 ride Kiddieland.

New Jersey actually had many amusement parks that are now lost to history. The most famous one was Palisades Amusement Park which, like Olympic Park, straddled two towns in Bergen County (Cliffside Park and Fort Lee) and opened in 1898 and lasted until our graduation year of 1971.

The park got national attention when “Palisades Park“, a song recorded by Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon came out in 1962 and was a big hit.

Palisades Park, in my two visits there in the 196os, seemed bigger (it was 38 acres and OP was 40 acres), noisier and dirtier. But it did have the largest saltwater pool and it offered free music acts. I saw two shows there that I believe were hosted by “Cousin Brucie” Morrow from 77 WABC AM radio. One show was the Lovin’ Spoonful and the other was Paul Revere and the Raiders with The Young Rascals

It was one of the most visited amusement parks in the country.  Like Olympic Park, one reason it closed was that the number of violent incidents in the park was on the rise. Also, the decline in popularity of amusement parks and the increasing value of these large tracts of land made selling very tempting.  After the park closed in 1971, a high-rise luxury apartment complex was built on its site. The video below shows some of the park and open with a 30-second radio ad and then the song Freddy Cannon song as the soundtrack.

For the 1964 season, Olympic Park debuted its new Wild Mouse coaster next to the pool. But the future of the park looked like it was to become a complex of 21-story luxury apartment towers. The Guenthers were to get almost $2 million for the land. But on the day of the sale,  a “mystery caller” from the city government of Irvington warned the sellers and buyers that Irvington was about to change the park’s zoning from high-rise to garden apartments. The deal fell apart and the park’s future was uncertain.

The park opened again in May 1965 and even added a 35-foot-high sky ride that took passengers for a 1000-foot-long loop above the park, a Trablant ride, and a paratrooper ride for kids. But the opening day was a disaster. A mob of 400 to 500 teenagers went on a rampage inside the park wrecking the arcade and game concessions along the midway and stole prizes. They were chased from the park and then attacked the nearby residential neighborhoods. smashing windows in homes and terrorizing residents. People avoided Olympic Park for weeks afterward. Still, the season continued and the circus still had two shows daily. 1965 was was the park’s golden jubilee under the Guenther family’s ownership. If you were over 50, you got free admission.

After the season ended with Labor Day, Robert Guenther announced that a new buyer was found, and even if the sale didn’t materialize, the park would not reopen. In fact, that sale did not go through. The park rides were sold. Many Irvingtonians know that Disney bought Olympic Park’s “largest carousel in the world” for Walt Disney World in Florida where it has been rethemed for Cinderella.

The park was empty and overgrown until 1979 with a few buildings and the skeleton of the roller coaster. Many of our classmates did some trespassing on the property during those 13 years/ I wish I had salvaged some of the signage as memorabilia.

In 1979, construction began on a light industrial park that occupies the space now.

In 2012, a stone monument was unveiled on the location of the original entrance (now 990 Chancellor Ave. ) The monument has etchings of the Jet Star, Ferris wheel and the carousel and a brief history of the park.

SOURCES

• http://lostamusementparks.napha.org/ 
• Smile: A Picture History of Olympic Park, 1887 – 1965
• Olympic Park group on Facebook
• www.palisadespark.com

• From Back in the Day