Lots of stuff in my hometown. Geauga Lake amusement park; SeaWorld Ohio, which was right across the lake from it (there’s a water park where that used to be); The Richfield Coliseum (it’s just a field now). Randall Park Mall, which was largest enclosed shopping center when it opened in 1976, is finally being torn down after years of rot. It will be replaced by an industrial park.
Cannon Mills (later Fieldcrest Cannon later Pillowtex) was a major landmark in Kannapolis NC. It went out of business in 2003, imploded in 2005 and I can’t find my way around Kannapolis anymore.
Pleasure Island was also built by Cornelius Vanderbuilt Wood, who built Disneyland, Freedomland, and other parks. Pleasure Island was his only non-Disney park to last any significant length of time*. It was open for a decade. The road that went past it is still called “Pleasure Island Road”. It’s now an industrial park.
I’ve been to Aquarama, Freedomland, and Palisades Amusement Park. They will be missed.
Not quite true. For years now they’ve had “profilers” set up in the State Park that, when you line them up with the mountain, re-create the old profile.
Side view:
It’s all so desperately sad. New Hampshire is just that much closer to being nowhere at all.
the New England Confectionary Company (NECCo) used to have a big plant in Cambridge MA along Mass Ave., just north of MIT (and across from the Campus House of Pizza).
http://www.cambridgehistory.org/discover/candy/necco.html
They eventually wised up and painted their water tower so it looked like a pack of their signature candy, Necco Wafers:
NECCO moved out in 2004 for Revere (Revere!!), and sold the building to Novartis. The DNA helix they painted on the water tower just ain’t the same…
Soco Gardens Zoo, Maggie Valley, NC.
From Wikipedia: Soco Gardens Zoo was a private zoo in Maggie Valley, North Carolina that closed in October 2005 after being in operation for more than 50 years.
Buildings and grounds are still there, the larger animals have gone bye-bye. A local newspaper account says this.
Seriously, is there nothing else interesting in the entire state? I used to work with some New Hampshireites (before the Old Man fell) and I used to tease them about how they needed to diversify their iconography.
I think my opinion has been vindicated.
Converting a brick building from candy making to biotech may not have been the smartest move. I read somewhere that they had to do an incredible amount of sandblasting to get all the sugar residue out of the pores in the walls.
The Nut Tree
It was a restaurant (and gift shop, and toy store, and airport, and playground…) on Interstate 80 between Sacramento and San Francisco. My grandparents lived in Sacramento and a visit to them wasn’t complete without a trip to The Nut Tree.
I was out that way a few years ago and it’s a shadow of its former self.
I’ve lived in NH for over 11 years, and it is pretty slim pickins. Mt. Washington, the windiest spot in the lower 48. Lake Winnipesaukee, butt of any joke with a summer camp in it. Childhood home of Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman. Home of Alan Shepard, second American in space. That’s about it.
Second person in space, first American.
Shhh. Don’t say anything mean about New Hampshire. They pick out our Presidents. And if you piss them off, they’ll give us a bad one.
Nut Tree was famous as a place to fly into. Is the little airport still there?
Sadly, because of a double whammy, Funtown Pier and a lot of nearby Boardwalk in Seaside Heights, N.J.
It got hit by Sandy in late 2012, which devastated large portions of the pier, ruining the ferris wheel and the mouse (Casino Pier, a little farther north, was hit, too, but fared better). They cleaned it up and started rehabilitating it, and then a fire caused by a junction box people didn’t even know was there took out almost everything else at Funtown.
Fortunately, the Sawmill (a popular bar and pizza place) survived, but I don’t know how much else did. A lot of memories went up there.
Down the shore…
http://www.tonymart.com/Default.htm
Featured in the movie “Eddie and the Cruisers”
https://sp.yimg.com/ib/th?id=HN.608046826998989717&pid=15.1&P=0
All gone…like tears…in the rain
So I’ll throw in the Civic Arena and Forbes Field. The Igloo I was always a little neutral on but Forbes was a Hell of a great ballpark.
Heck, when it comes to the Jersey Shore I’m sad that the Steel Pier is gone.
Yeah, they say it’s still there, but it ain’t. That pitiful short amusement pier can’;t begin to compare with that immensely long entertainment venue.
I visited in the 1960s, before a couple of fires took down first the original Music Hall, then took off the stuff at the end of the pier.
It had TWO movie theaters, a live act (I saw the Supremes there, and the Cowsills, and Herman’s Hermits), a Diving Bell that would take you down into the Jersey ocean where you saw – nothing, a circus at the end of the pier, and the Fabulous Diving Horse!
It also had games and trained animals who would perform for feed, a Ripley’s Believe it or Not Odditorium, souvenir shops by the ton, and eating places. You could spend the entire day there.
And, over it all, the giant billboards for “Coca Cola” and for "Zaberer’s Seafood Restaurant (which is also, sadly, gone)
The Diving Bell in the background:
Not all of these are of the Steel Pier. Some are of the new bastardized pier:
Memorial Stadium in Baltimore is long gone. Some people got no respect.
Shrug
Mt. Washington would beat Connecticut’s image: a tree.