Hey folks, be sure to check out the new graphic guide to the Oakland neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Put together by the Toonseum and Harold Behar, the standard-size comic book features local comic artists both young and old, including myself, Andy Scott. The artists were charged with the task of illustrating a unique place in Oakland of their choosing. Some stories in the anthology are simply historical/informative, while others offer an introspective/personal experience, and others still chose to represent their place with humor and poignant remarks.
I chose to share a bit of information concerning Luna Park, a place lost to progress and failure. It was an amusement park built at the turn of the 1900s on what is now the intersections of Craig, Baum and Centre in North Oakland. There is much to note about this piece of history, what is most interesting is looking at it as a great example of the fantastic visions that American entertainment tycoons possessed in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Pittsburg’s Luna Park was the first Frederick Ingersoll built, in the years following he built several similar parks across the US and the world, after a short 4 years the park in Pittsburgh was closed due to bankruptcy and the new competing trolley park in town, Kennywood.
My original interest in Luna Park stemmed from my nostalgic desire to have experienced it’s grandiose either in the past or in the Pittsburgh landscape I know today. To check out pictures of the park just Google Image search “Luna Park Pittsburgh”
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