PARKLIFE
Quassy Amusement Park, Connecticut, USA
Andrew Mellor takes a look at one of the last remaining US trolly parks
Quassy Amusement Park is something of a New England – if not a national – treasure. Having celebrated its centenary year in 2008, it is one of only 11 remaining ‘trolley parks’ in the US today, according to the National Amusement Park Historical Association, and has beaten the odds on many an occasion to survive in an industry that has seen literally hundreds of similar facilities disappear. As many readers will know, the ‘trolley parks’ to be found
around the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s were built by railroad companies and at the height of their popularity there were more than 1,000 such properties. The Great Depression of 1929, however, saw most of these parks fall victim to the harsh economic times and the lean years of the Second World War that followed, but even though 1930 spelled the end of the line for the Connecticut Trolley Company, its most popular summer stop, one that filled the rail cars to capacity, lives on. As was the case with many other parks of the era, when
it opened in 1908 Quassy’s central features included a picnic grove offering bathing in Lake Quassapaug, boating
28 InterPark July–August 2012
and dancing. For many years, the venue was known as Lake Quassapaug – Quassapaug being a native American term meaning ‘big pond’ or ‘rock pond’ – but the locals eventually started calling it simply ‘Quassy,’ a nickname that stuck. Trolley rides from nearby Waterbury were 15 cents during
those early years, as scrapbook newspaper advertisements reveal, while soon after the park opened, a carousel was added, as was a dance pavilion in 1910. A much larger, open air dance hall was built in 1915 on the lower level of the sloping site and by the 1920s the park was hosting bands in the building seven nights a week during the height of summer. Today, that same pavilion, the oldest building on the site and still with its unique architecture intact, is home to a redemption arcade. The late 1920s saw major improvements being made
to the road leading to the lake and visitors soon found that taking the bus to and from Quassy was much faster than riding the electrified railway. As mentioned, by 1930, according to newspaper accounts, the trolley line had ceased operation. The construction of a new carousel roundhouse was
carried out in 1927 near the dance hall and the park’s E. Joy Morris menagerie carousel was moved into the structure, where it would remain for the next 60 years. While many similar businesses around the country closed
for good during the Great Depression, Quassy managed to survive and some years later, in 1937, a change of ownership took place when three of the park’s concessionaires – John Frantzis, George Terezakis and Mike Leon –acquired the property. And it was during the sale that the classic Morris carousel nearly went up in flames. “So the story goes, there was a dispute over the carousel
being part of the purchase and the previous owner had the animals stacked up and was ready to torch them when a deal was finally struck,” said George Frantzis II, a current
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