Encounters with Zoltar, the Mechanical Fortune-Teller of Coney Island
read the entire article in print in Issue 2.
The fortune-telling machines came to Coney Island in 1903. That summer, The New York Times announced that “electricity has come sharply into competition with human endeavor in the futurity business.” These machines, and the amusement parks that housed them, were part of a “New Coney Island,” rehabilitated from earlier decades when gambling, crime, and sex work had settled into Norton’s Point at the westernmost end of the island. To this day, Coney Island remains equal parts wondrous and worn, including its resident fortune-teller, Zoltar.
When the Dutch settled New Amsterdam in the early 1600s, they began charting the waters around Long Island. At the southwestern tip of what is now Brooklyn, they came across a marshy area and a series of small islands. One was filled with rabbits, which they called “Conyne Eylandt” (Rabbit Island), or so one story goes.
To the northeast on the mainland, a small Quaker settlement, Gravesend, was established in 1645. Soon after, a Canarsie chief, whose peoples had dwelt on the beaches of Narrioch — the “land without shadows” that included Conyne Eylandt — for generations, entered into an agreement with the Gravesenders, which included rights to the islands. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, strong currents had filled in various ocean inlets with enough sand to connect Coney Island in the west (up to present-day West 21st Street), to Pine Island / Coney Hook (to present-day West 8th Street), Gysbert Island / Johnson Island (West Brighton), Middle Division (Brighton Beach), and Sedge Bank (Manhattan Beach) into a single landform.
From left: Joan Vinckeboons and Library of Congress, Manatvs gelegen op de Noot Riuier, 1670, map courtesy of Library of Congress, The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands; Bird’s-Eye View of Coney Island at Night, 1906, postcard print.
The area’s first hotel came in 1829 with the Coney Island House. It was preceded by Shell Road, a one-mile stretch of road paved with crushed seashells, which offered a wooden bridge crossing over the Coney Island Creek for the first time. Slowly, over decades, a patchwork of restaurants, bathhouses, and bars emerged, along with a side-wheel steamboat service that ran from Manhattan. The wealthy came for seaside pleasures: walking the beach, digging for clams, or just lounging around. Shadier characters preferred Coney Island for its seclusion and proximity to the city, giving Norton’s Point (later renamed Seagate, a private gated community) and Coney Island their seedy reputations.
read the entire article in print in Issue 2.
Above: Spreads from “Encounters with Zoltar, the Mechanical Fortune-Teller of Coney Island” from perhaps Issue 2, featuring archival and contemporary images of Coney Island.
Chris Alen Sula is a teacher and scholar living in Brooklyn. He is interested in technology, the occult, and cultural studies, and has been published in various journals and edited volumes.
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