By Charles Denson

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Ownership of Coney Island has always been in contention. In 1640, a charter was granted to the town of Gravesend, which included the now famous sand bar as its southern boundary. In 1643, the town's title was challenged by the indigenous people who had lived on the land for thousands of years. They attacked the settlement, forcing the abandonment of the town until 1654, when a settlement was reached for "purchase" of the island and surrounding lands. That battle set the contentious tone of what was to come for the next 300 years.

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Some of Coney Island's property disputes lingered on for centuries, from colonial times, through Gravesend's incorporation into the city of Brooklyn in 1894, and on into the 1920s. Most of the island and beachfront was illegally sold off in the 1800s by Gravesend’s corrupt town supervisor John Y. McKane, who was later convicted of numerous crimes and sentenced to prison.

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Until the early 1800s, Coney Island remained a remote dune-covered barrier island and estuary, a landscape in constant transition, continually shaped by storms and tides. The earliest attraction was its natural world, including pristine Coney Island Creek, a salt marsh known for some of the best fishing in New York City. Coney Island as a resort began in the 1840s when a ferry dock, a dance pavilion, and a primitive hotel opened at the western end of the island, which became known as Norton's Point.

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During the late 19th century, developers divided Coney Island into four distinct neighborhoods:  Sea Gate at the west, Manhattan Beach at the east, leaving Brighton Beach and "Coney Island" in the middle. Wealthy railroad barons purchased vast oceanfront properties and competed to create attractions at their rail terminals and steamboat piers. 

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Luxurious hotels opened to the east: the Manhattan Beach Hotel, the Hotel Brighton, and the Oriental Hotel catered to the upper classes, while smaller hotels opened along the beach in Central Coney Island. The Brighton Race track opened in the 1870s and operated into early the 20th century.

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The West End of Coney soon had "fresh air" homes and hospitals for immigrant mothers and children. These sprawling facilities saved the lived of thousands of sick children, from the 1870s until 1920, when new development forced their closure.

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Amusements popped up in 1890s with the Elephant Hotel, and Sea Lion Park, the first enclosed amusement park. Steeplechase Park opened in 1897, Luna Park in 1903, and Dreamland in 1904. Coney Island became an amusement laboratory and testing ground for ride factories on West Eighth Street. There would soon be hundreds of roller coasters and other mechanical amusements lining the beach.

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Coney Island was sparsely populated in the late 1890s, when the city had an opportunity to purchase the entire West End, and all of Manhattan Beach, to create a large public park. Unfortunately, the project could not be funded, setting the stage for a century of ill-advised residential construction on a fragile, easily flooded sandbar.

Development of the West End began in earnest around 1910, when large properties that ran from the ocean to the creek were subdivided, leveled, and sold off to speculators and private parties. Illegal filling of a section of the creek turned Coney Island into a peninsula. Mermaid Avenue and Neptune Avenues were built on landfill above former mudflats, and both avenues were soon lined with commercial establishments and private homes. 

Substantial three-story brick apartment houses sprang up in the 1920s, many purchased by families who lived above stores they operated at street level. The six or so rental flats in the buildings were called "taxpayer" units, as tenant rent paid the property taxes of the owners. Many immigrant families found their fortunes by residing and working at Coney Island. It was easy to start a seasonal business, make good money, and move up economically.

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By 1910, Coney Island had become perhaps the most famous resort in the world, with millions of visitors singing its praises. The problem was that nearly all the shorefront of Coney Island, with the exception of a small park at the foot of Ocean Parkway, was in private hands. The narrow beach could not be accessed without paying a fee to a bathhouse.

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The city solved the problem by buying out beachfront landowners and building a public boardwalk and a wide new beach that was free and open to all. The Boardwalk opened in 1923, replacing Surf Avenue as the island's main promenade. Traveling to the beach also became easier as the newly connected subway system brought visitors from all over New York.

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The Roaring 20s saw substantial development: the 16-story Half Moon Hotel, opulent theaters, fireproof bathhouses, new banks, large elevator apartment houses, and fancy restaurants. Millions of visitors crowded the beach and Boardwalk. The future seemed bright until the Great Depression brought everything to a halt in 1929 and into the 1930s. Coney Island remained popular as the "Nickel Empire," a place for people of small means to have a good time. In 1937, jurisdiction of Coney Island's beach and Boardwalk was transferred to the Parks Department, and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began his destructive transformation of the area.

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The West End became a thriving, mixed community. In the 1940s, the area was "red-lined" by banks, a new practice that discriminated against immigrants and people of color. This meant that loans, mortgages, and insurance were difficult to obtain.  Adding to the problem was Robert Moses's 1949 declaration of the West End as slated for urban renewal despite that it remained a vibrant neighborhood. Once that declaration was made, many homeowners and landlords knew their properties would eventually be condemned and taken by the government through eminent domain, so there was little incentive to make improvements.

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Destructive urban renewal began in the mid-1950s.  Many of the old bathhouses and summer bungalow colonies had closed during the 50s. The empty bungalows soon became year-round rentals for low-income and welfare tenants, though they weren't winterized. Most of the families had been relocated from other urban renewal zones. In 1954 the NYC Planning Commission, manipulated by Moses, created a "master plan," a scorched earth policy for Coney Island that would essentially destroy nearly every building within a 60-block radius.

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The city's "slum clearance" plan was rocked by scandal and exposed as a benefit for developers that destroyed the lives of the city's poorest tenants. Thousands of homes and apartments were abandoned and then demolished. In 1967 Mayor John Lindsay declared the West End of Coney Island a poverty zone and launched the Coney Island West Urban Renewal Program. 

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Two opposing groups, the Coney Island Community Council and the Coney Island Coordinating Committee, together developed a checkerboard plan for low income housing while preserving most of the existing middle-class housing. The plan fell apart when federal funding was cut for the new projects, leaving a war zone of burned-out buildings and vacant lots.

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By the late 1970s, new housing projects were again rising, but the Mermaid Avenue shopping district had been devastated. Most long-time residents had fled the West End to new apartment buildings near Ocean Parkway. A new organization, Astella Development, was formed in 1975 with the goal of restoring the neighborhood by building affordable low-rise housing on abandoned city land, replacing the vacant rubble-filled lots of the West End. Mermaid Avenue began its slow revival as the surrounding community organized, rebuilt, and revitalized the area.

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Despite local opposition, a section of Coney Island was rezoned in 2009 to allow construction of 5,000 units of high-rises on property once zoned for amusements. The devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was a reminder to residents that they live on a fragile barrier island in a time of rising sea levels and climate change. Protecting what never should have been built on an on ephemeral sand bar will be the next challenge for Coney Island.

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Charles Denson is the author of "Coney Island: Lost and Found," and Director of the Coney Island History Project, www.coneyislandhistory.org