It's a rule of thumb that when an internet article's headline is a question, the answer to the question will be No. But in this case, I think it's a Um, Maybe? Probably?
I learned about the strange story of Freedomland USA from Frank Santopadre's superb podcast Fun for All Ages. In an episode about defunct amusement parks, Frank's guests, theme park experts and designers Dave Cobb and Robert Coker describe the Bronx, NY park themed to American history that only lasted from 1960 to 1964.
The park was conceived and built by C.V. Wood, who was Disneyland's first employee in 1954, and was instrumental in getting Disneyland built and opened on time in 1955. However, immediately after Disneyland's opening, he seems to have left Disney's employ in 1955 on bad terms; lifelong Disney theme park designer Bob Gurr has said Wood was a con man.
Built on marshland owned by William Zeckendorf Sr. in 1960, Freedomland's footprint was in the shape of the 48 contiguous states of the United States, a novelty that is only impressive if one viewed it from the air, which of course none of the visitors did. Parkgoers could visit:
- Little Old New York;
- Old Chicago, with a Great Chicago Fire occurring every half hour;
- The Great Plains, with a stagecoach ride;
- San Francisco, including a Jungle Cruise-style boat ride through Lewis and Clark territory, and an Earthquake dark ride;
- The Old Southwest, including a dark mine ride;
- New Orleans / Mardi Gras, with a Pirates of the Caribbean knock-off ride; and
- Satellite City, themed to the future and featuring a reproduction of a Cape Canaveral control room.
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The park was beset with financial problems from the start, and attendance was well below projections. After the 1964 summer season, it filed for bankruptcy and closed.
But soon after its closure, construction began on the park's site for Co-Op City, the world's largest housing cooperative, with over 15,000 apartments.
On the Fun for All Ages podcast, Dave Cobb says that Freedomland may have been a five-year scheme to fast-track Co-Op City construction. He says the initial planning for Co-Op City's development started before the park.
"The idea was if certain buildings on the site could stand for at least five years without sinking into what was basically marshland, they could forego a lot of the testing and sort of ecological testing of the area to get the permits. That's the rumor.
And that the entire park was like literally meant to fail in five years. But I don't think that's ever been shown as proof, but there's lots of weird coincidences about the development of Co-op City that lead that point towards that."
It's alleged that Freedomland was a "placeholder" to obtain land variances, paving the way for Co-Op City.
But it seems odd that such an extensive and ambitious theme park would be built just as a five-year scam. Is there any proof that this was its purpose?
Well, in a 1970 interview, Zeckendorf admitted to it: "Freedomland, which wasn't mine although we had a lot of money in it, was a device to hold that land, and that was sound."
In Freedomland U.S.A.: The Definitive History, author Michael R. Virgintino wrote:
"[Zeckendorf] admitted years later that the park was a temporary occupant until variances could be obtained to construct large apartment buildings on his marshland. The development that became known as Co-op City had been conceived during the late '50s."
For more information, here is the excellent YouTube channel, Defunctland's video on Freedomland USA:
Previously:
