Traveltime: Freedomland 1963 James Fitzpatrick - Peterson Productions

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedomland_U.S.A.

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Freedomland U.S.A. (usually called Freedomland) was a short-lived, American history theme park in the Baychester section of the northeastern part of the New York City borough of The Bronx. Its most popular slogan was "The World's Largest Entertainment Center."

Freedomland opened on Father's Day, June 19, 1960. It declared bankruptcy and closed at the end of the 1964 season, and the land now is occupied by Co-op City, the world's largest housing cooperative, as well as the Bay Plaza Shopping Center...

Connections to Disneyland

Freedomland was conceived and built by C. V. Wood (1920–1992), a Texan who had worked in the planning, construction and management of Disneyland. He had been hired by Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney during 1953 following the preparation of a feasibility study for Disneyland while serving as the team leader for the project at Stamford Research Institute. Wood selected the orange grove site in Anaheim, California, that is occupied by Disneyland. Wood became close to the Disney brothers during the next two years, but their relationship ended approximately a year following the opening of Disneyland. A number of reasons for this are cited but none have been confirmed. Among the theories: Wood embezzled money from the park; Wood took too much public credit for the creation of Disneyland; Wood had betrayed Disney by planning his own theme parks and stealing Disney's original concept.[citation needed] Depending on who tells the story, Wood either resigned or was fired by the Disney brothers.

After leaving Disneyland, the 36-year-old Wood began creating and building theme parks across the country. Each park was funded and managed by local businesses and investors. Magic Mountain near Denver began during 1958. It never was completed and failed within two years. Pleasure Island in Wakefield, Massachusetts, operated from 1959 until 1969. Freedomland opened during 1960 with Milton T. ("Ted") Raynor, a television sports producer and attorney from Chicago, served as the park's first president. Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington opened during 1961 and continues to operate today.

Construction and opening

The designers of Freedomland created a unique history theme concept. The property layout was arranged in the shape of a large map of the contiguous United States. As guests entered from the parking lot, they walked into Little Old New York of the 1890s. Baychester Avenue and the New England Thruway at the park's western edge approximately represented the border with Canada. Freedomland was divided into seven themed areas based on the history of the United States. Each section featured appropriate attractions, shops and restaurants, creating a true theme park with one overarching theme. The research and design team consisted of approximately 200 top artists and architects, including 19 Academy Award nominees. Original music for the park was written by Jule Styne, composer of many Broadway musicals, including Gypsy and Funny Girl. Lyrics were written by George Weiss, who is known for Lullaby of Birdland and What a Wonderful World and other songs.

Although the property was 205 acres (0.83 km2), the actual amusement park itself was just 85 acres (340,000 m2) – larger than Disneyland's 65 acres (260,000 m2). The park could accommodate 32,000 visitors at one time (90,000 over the course of a day) and boasted 8 miles (13 km) of navigable waterways and lakes, 10,000 newly planted trees, more than 18 restaurants and snack bars, and parking for 7,200 cars for guests and 1,800 for employees. It cost $65 million to build...