Postcard:Entrance to Dreamland, Coney Island, N.Y.

In 1898 developers created the world's first amusement park at Coney Island. The same year, Congress permitted private printers to produce postcards for the first time. A postcard-collecting mania ensued, especially among Coney Island's daily half-million visitors, who purchased and posted tens of thousands of postcards every day. A trip to Coney Island merited sending a postcard because it offered such a joyous break from everyday lives filled with hard work and strict social rules. This one, typical of its kinds, depicts the entrance to the Dreamland amusement park where millions of lights and monumental architecture dazzled visitors. William H. Reynolds opened the park in 1904 pairing rides and attractions with bizarre side shows. Visitors could view curiosities such as premature babies in incubators, a one armed lion tamer named Captain Bonavita or the Lilliputian Village with three hundred dwarf inhabitants.Park owners abandoned Dreamland in 1911 after a fire that began in the water flume of a ride prophetically called Hell Gate destroyed the park.