Sheepshead Man Wants Help In Historical Search
Sheepshead Bay resident Luke Stangarone is on a mission to uncover the history of a magnificently preserved stained glass window. He’s enlisted the help of Amusing the Zillion blogger Tricia Vita, who then turned to us. And since we’re pretty useless, we decided to turn to you…
So here’s the deal: Stangarone’s wife’s relatives were old-school Coney carnies, and they managed to rescue two stained glass windows from the tremendous Feltman’s complex before it was torn down. The windows sat in a muddy Park Slope basement for decades until Stangarone decided to clean them up, and is donating one to the Coney Island Museum. But the problem is, they’re not sure where in Feltman’s the windows come from, and it was quite an expansive complex:
Charles Feltman is famous as the inventor of the hot dog, but his entertainment complex on Surf Avenue was multi-faceted and covered a full city block. According to the Coney Island History Project, which has a 120-year-old chair from Feltman’s Maple Garden on display, the Feltman empire included nine restaurants, two bars, a ballroom, an outdoor movie theater, a hotel, a beer garden, a bathhouse, a pavilion, a Tyrolean village, a carousel, a roller coaster called the ZIZ and the maple garden! Since Feltman’s closed in 1954 and was demolished to make way for Astroland Park in 1962, you’d have be over 60 to remember going there.
Well, any of you history buffs, or old coots (or both), know where these lovely windows come from?