Kennywood in the Space Age: How a Traditional Amusement Park Raced into the Future

The Racer received a new front for 1960, while portions of the old streamlined façade can be seen beyond. Heinz History Center, Detre Library & Archives

Every year, at any amusement park, the first thaw of spring brings excitement for the new season. As the days got longer in 1990 Kennywood Park began tearing off the bright blue front of its Racer roller coaster. The goal was to rebuild it in the style of the 1927 original, with lattice work around an archway fronting a curved roof that extended back over the loading platform. For three decades the Racer’s blue façade had been the height of Midcentury Modernism, a squared-off mix of colorful porcelain enamel, with dividers that jutted skyward to flagpoles, all punctuated by flashing bulbs in red and yellow circles.

Once the blue panels started coming off, a surprise was revealed. Not only was the original 1927 wood front mostly intact, but a 1946 streamline façade covering it was still there too. After all, it had been easier – twice – to cover the old front rather than demolish it. Kennywood’s habit of reusing instead of discarding is one reason the park was named a National Historic Landmark. While the park continues to grow and modernize, Kennywood is also filled with exciting reminders of its past.

A turn-of-the-century trolley park south of Pittsburgh, Kennywood survived the shakeout of the early 1900s when most small parks folded – as did expo-style, nighttime parks like Pittsburgh’s Luna. Kennywood found its niche by embracing industrial company picnics. Employers like Mesta Machine, Westinghouse Electric and U.S.Steel drew 50,000 to 60,000 people on their picnic days. Just as dependable were fraternal group gatherings, nationality days and, most of all, school picnics.

Kennywood remained fresh during the Depression by adding dashes of Art Deco to rides or new structures, like the Tower refreshment stand near the cafeteria (now site of the Pagoda stand). Built in 1929 the Tower reflected the early ornamental style of Deco, topped by a domed silver roof. The upper floor served as home to the Voice of Kennywood, the park’s new public address system.

More striking in mid-Deco boldness were the four monolithic pylons atop the Sportland games building, constructed in 1936 near the Tower stand. The next year the Penny Arcade abandoned its nickelodeon and vaudeville roots for true penny games. Pittsburgh architect Raymond Marlier (1894–1969) applied a Deco treatment of sharp edges, three stripes of dashed lines and a zigzag line, all dominated by a giant penny above the entrance. Marlier also refaced the park’s service building in cream-colored porcelain enamel panels and in 1938 completed a matching administration building so that park offices could be moved there from downtown.

Photographed in the late 1950s atop a Ferris wheel at the end of the new mall are, clockwise, the mall fountain, Novelty stand, Rockets above the lagoon, Tower stand with Space Age roof treatment, 1899 cafeteria and Sportland building (which had been moved and turned 90 degrees to create the mall fountain). Heinz History Center, Detre Library & Archives

The Laff in the Dark ride near the park’s entrance received a simple streamlined Deco front in 1939, with tiered layers and a central pylon. The front and stunts inside were designed by Cleveland-area scenic artist Leo Kathe (1886–1957), who at the same time was creating stunts for Noah’s Ark, plus redoing Cedar Point’s ballroom in colorful Deco. News blurbs said the entire park was being remade: “To some extent the New York World’s Fair theme is being carried out. It is especially noticeable on the entrance to the Laff-in-the-Dark, one of the most popular of the park’s fun makers” with “gorgeous splashes of paint in the ‘World of Tomorrow’ effect.”

In 1940 the Circle Swings/Sea Planes, built in 1925 by the legendary Harry Traver (1877–1961) of Beaver Falls, Beaver County, were moved onto a raised concrete island to circle high above the lagoon. The six passenger cars were rebuilt with a shiny stainless skin, tapering to fins, and renamed the Rockets. The next year Kathe updated the park’s turn-of-the-century band shell with sparse white stucco, chrome trim, recessed lighting and neon.

Little changed during World War II, but as hostilities eased in 1945, Kennywood made a big purchase: a pair of shiny rounded locomotives and six passenger cars that had run at the New York World’s Fair. The Choo Choo engines looked like stylistic sisters to the Rockets, and 70 years later they still take riders along the bluff overlooking the Monongahela River.

Postwar prosperity ushered in the park’s most vibrant period. White neon was added to outline the Lucky stand, an early Deco creation (1931) of Raymond Marlier that remains near today’s Thunderbolt coaster. Also, the cafeteria was enclosed for the first time in its 48 years, with an employee lunchroom added to the rear. At the very back was a new small concession (still there as The Big Dipper) topped by a pylon with zigzag inner rails, spun aluminum spheres and a stainless steel finial. The big news for 1946 was the Racer redo with streamlined pylons that extended to include fronts for the Ponies, Looper and Bubble Bounce rides. The ultramodern architecture was by Warren L. Hindenach (1890-1978), a Philadelphia engineer perhaps recommended by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company (PTC), supplier of many rides and parts to the park.

Late Deco streamlining met early Modernism when the Racer front was remodeled in 1946.
Heinz History Center, Detre Library & Archives

The park’s Golden Anniversary was celebrated in 1947, so major changes were held till the following year. In the largest makeover of the park in decades, a new open-air “mall” was created by Leo Kathe that led from the lagoon and Tower stand back to the band shell. This required lifting the Sportland building, turning it 90 degrees, and moving it back-to-back to another games building. An adjacent children’s Teddy Bear coaster was dismantled but reborn in spirit close by as the Little Dipper, which was set back next to the Choo Choo train. The shuffling created the oblong mall with a fountain at the front end, the Looper (spinning cage) ride at the other, and a grassy open space between them, all outlined by park benches amid thousands of white and pink petunias.

A game room to house 12 new Skee-Ball alleys from PTC was created where the two games buildings met. This stylish endcap, also designed by Kathe, featured a scalloped roof edge that wrapped around to the Sportland, all outlined in neon with glass block pylons on corners.

In 1949 Kathe transformed the Pippin platform from a wooden shelter into a cooly streamlined station. He completely modernized the original carousel building (which served as a soda fountain for three decades), augmenting the support moldings, while partitioning the interior into three food stands using glass block, translucent panels and stainless steel. Billboard noted that Kathe’s two projects added more than 1,000 feet of neon to the park.

The 1950s were a challenge as television began monopolizing leisure time. Kennywood responded by booking appearances of TV characters like Lassie, Dennis the Menace, the Lone Ranger and Chester from Gunsmoke (yes, Dennis Weaver). Fresh lighting and design became critical for drawing customers – parks depended on each ride to entice people to buy tickets and not just walk around for free. Kennywood also began adding flashier rides like a Roll-O-Plane in 1950 resembling two shiny, spinning rocket ships at each end of a spinning arm. In 1951 the lagoon rockets got new ships with fewer Deco doodads but just as much smooth stainless steel. A new concession stand, the Midway, also opened across from the Jack Rabbit coaster. Its entire roof jutted outward with giant neon script words announcing the food sold within and “Refreshments” facing forward. Built for under $6,000 it survives nearly untouched six decades later, a popular beacon for snack food lovers.

The Midway stand stillbathes the end of the main midway in its neon glow, across from more neon at the Jack Rabbit coaster. Photo by Brian Butko

Kiddieland got some upgrades for 1953, including a new entrance and a circular comfort station with big pink and black diamonds on the outside walls and a giant Mother Goose on top. The designer this time was Modern Art Studios, which had decades of experience designing window displays and scenic backgrounds. By the 1940s the Chicago firm was doing park and carnival concessions and advertised complete Kiddieland packages. In 1954 they remade Kennywood’s dance pavilion (one of the three buildings from the park’s 1899 opening) into Enchanted Forest; despite the pavilion’s lavish Deco interior, dance bands were long past their prime. Modern converted it to a fantasy walkthrough that they called a “Kiddie-Land Palace.” Its gentle theme was aimed at kids, with toy soldiers guarding the entry amid Ali Baba–style spires.

The park took an even larger leap into the future when it replaced the Snapper Cuddle Up ride (where today’s Lemonade stand is) with an expensive African safari–themed dark ride. A contest on local TV brought the name Zoomerang. An exuberant façade, pierced by fins presaging what would soon be on every car, was the first of many park buildings from the mind of architect Jack Ray (1911–63).

Mostly forgotten today, Ray had a tremendous influence on parks in the mid-20th century. Born John C. Ray, he started a business designing displays in Canada at age 19. He was hired by “carnival king” James “Patty” Conklin (1892–1970), which led to Jack designing fronts at Palisades Park in New Jersey for the next quarter century. Meanwhile, he launched his own design studio and produced carnival shows, where he met a showgirl who became his wife. Park managers took note of his progressive ideas about colors and materials and began hiring him to update and design entire structures. By 1949 Billboard proclaimed that Ray had “done as much, if not more, than any other in his field to modernize the lure and heighten the money-earning potential of midway shows.”

In a 1953 feature on painting tips, Jack explained that the traditional park colors of red, white and blue had been superseded by new hues like chartreuse, lemon and purplish maroon. Contrasting backgrounds were sometimes used but stripes and borders had become “a thing of the past.” His newest technique was to use “the same color in increasingly lighter tints to give dramatic contrast and direct the eyes of the crowd.” Among the fronts where he applied this were Laff in the Dark and Zoomerang.

In 1954 Jack moved to a San Diego suburb to open an office specializing in design and scenic work for amusement parks. He also leased Mission Beach Amusement Park five miles away to serve as a workshop where new ideas could be tested. He renamed it Belmont as a tribute to his early design work at a park by that name in Montreal.

With Zoomerang open, the Daffy Klub, a walk-through fun house between the Jack Rabbit and Racer coasters, was converted to 3-in-Line, a tic-tac-toe game played with five rubber balls rolled towards a grid of holes. The building itself was rechristened Pastime.

On the other side of the Racer, about 100 feet away, Jack Ray designed an upswept-roof refreshment stand in 1955 that survives mostly unchanged. The Star stand was named for an adjacent Ferris wheel that had light bulbs strung in a star pattern.

At the main entrance, “an ultra-modern new refreshment stand in gay colors,” designed in 1956 by Leo Kathe, and the 1939 front to Laff in the Dark, later the site of the Turnpike and now the Sky Rocket coaster. Heinz History Center, Detre Library & Archives

The main midway got an overhaul for 1956. Just inside the entrance, across from Laff in the Dark, a Rock-O-Plane by Eyerly Aircraft was added, though Kennywood called theirs the Rock-N-Roll – fitting for both the ride’s spinning movements and the era’s new music. Centered in the midway between them was what newspapers called “an ultra-modern new refreshment stand in gay colors,” designed by Leo Kathe. Further ahead, the Penny Arcade got a “futuristic” makeover by Jack Ray, with repeating rows of circles and fins jutting outward.

Ray also proposed moving the park’s main entrance down Kennywood Boulevard to near the pool, where there already was a small entrance near the Skooter. A bridge would carry customers from the parking lot over traffic to a new entryway near the road, an outlandish mix of angles and overhangs, circles and spears. From there, a new midway led past the pool to the Skooter ride. To the right was a double Shoot the Chute, with artificial mountains in today’s Pirate Ship area. To the left, squeezed between the road and the pool, was a Turnpike ride. He signed an aerial rendering of it, “Think Big!” Nothing came of his plan, but the chutes and Turnpike suggestions were prescient.

New for 1957 was another refreshment stand, the Novelty, this one between the Auto Race and Tower stand. Jack Ray designed it in a restrained style to complement the Sportland building, just a few steps away. The next year the Pippin coaster got an updated front and streamlined cars to match. The park had recently gotten a Round Up, which it called the Satellite, and keeping with the outer space theme, a Scrambler purchased for 1959 was named the Crazy Orbit.

The Star stand continues to impress with its upswept roof. Photo by Brian Butko

The challenges for family-owned parks only accelerated in the 1960s. Television was entrenched, theme parks were bigger and flashier, and youth culture grew to have little patience for anything old-fashioned. Kennywood watched as similar parks, such as Euclid Beach in Cleveland and Riverview in Chicago, closed after not responding to the challenges.

Instead, Kennywood kept modernizing. Laff in the Dark’s 1939 streamline façade got a makeover, with shapes befitting the Space Age. An even more stunning upgrade for 1960 was the Racer façade, only 14 years old but looking dated. It and the adjoining games building (to be named Pastime) were given colorful, exciting fronts by Liff & Justh, a Pittsburgh architectural and engineering firm.

Bernard Liff (1913–2008) had graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now CMU) with a degree in architecture and formed his partnership with Milton Justh (1913–2006) in 1946. For 1961 they revised the small park entrance near the Skooter, plus created a new pool entry and refreshment stand. The use of concrete block as well as a screen wall and pergola-topped patio next to the pool’s sandy beach brought a touch of Palm Springs to the park.

In March 1961 Jack Ray drafted updates to the lagoon bridge. The new style boldly announced its Modernism with seven highly sculpted pylons along each rail, plus sidewall panels with cutouts of moons and stars. The same month Ray prepared drawings to update the band shell but two months later – opening day – the 60-year-old structure burned down because of a short in its neon trimming. A year later the park opened with a new band shell, the futuristic Starvue Plaza. Its sharp-edged awning balanced on two points and aimed to the sky, much like the iconic Phillips Petroleum gas stations that debuted two years later. The stage acts were also changing, moving away from TV celebrities to pop stars such as Frankie Avalon, Dion and Lesley Gore.

A 1960 rendering by Liff & Justh of the new fronts stretching from the Racer to the Pastime building.
Heinz History Center, Detre Library & Archives

Zoomerang’s façade was altered slightly in 1961 when its name was changed to the more-direct Safari, and more jungle stunts were added by Modern Art Studios. Across from it, the Dipsy Doodle airplane ride got a new color palette from Jack Ray by combining primrose, carmine and brilliant blue. Next to the Enchanted Castle (an update to the Forest), the Wild Mouse was replaced by the flashiest ride yet, the Calypso, outlined with more than 5,000 pulsating lights.

The Seattle World’s Fair of 1962 was perhaps the peak of futurism, with sponsors promoting the Space Age motif at every turn. Kennywood had been installing jet-themed rides since the 1940s and this year again the park added Kiddie flying saucers. When 30 Russians visited in 1963, park manager Carl Hughes joked that they were probably sent to take pictures of the park’s Rockets, Flying Saucers, Satellite and Crazy Orbit. A real rocket descended on the park when the captain of Bell Aerosystems’ demonstration team arrived direct from the New York World’s Fair piloting a jet pack.

In 1963 the park purchased a Tornado dark ride from Freedomland of the Bronx, New York, to replace the Enchanted Forest. Freedomland, opened in 1960, was to be the “East Coast Disneyland” but sank into bankruptcy after the 1964 season. The Tornado had Model Ts take riders through a Great Plains twister. Kennywood commissioned Jack Ray to remake the Enchanted Castle into the rural ride fronted by a big red barn. It marked the start of a societal turn away from rockets toward the calming influence of earth tones and farm themes, much as TV shows like Green Acres and Petticoat Junction served up comforting messages amid nightly newscasts from Vietnam.

This was to be Jack Ray’s last work for the park. He died that December from a heart attack at just 52. Liff & Justh began handling most of the big design projects. Outside the park, their buildings were plainer – hospitals, schools and libraries – though in 1963 they designed Pittsburgh’s first new movie theater in 30 years, the stylish Monroe on Route 22 in Monroeville.

Jack Ray’s over-the-top lagoon bridge perfectly captured the excitement of the style. The Rotor on the far end is roughly the location of today’s Paratrooper. Mike Costello Collection

Just across the lagoon from the Tornado a shooting gallery adopting the name of the popular TV show Gunsmoke opened in 1964 with a dark wood shaker shingle front designed by Liff & Justh. Machine guns and ray guns were out, replaced by Western rifles. Kennywood still leased its land, making permanent rides a financial risk compared to portable ones that could be moved out if needed. But with theme parks drawing away customers, management pressed forward with acquiring larger rides. The widening and relocation of Kennywood Boulevard gave the park room to expand, leading to the replacement of Laff in the Dark with the Turnpike in 1966. The new ride featured 22 gasoline-powered, Corvette-style cars on a 2,100-foot ribbon of concrete. Management visited 10 similar rides before most closely imitating Autopia at Disneyland. The layout was done by Liff, Justh & (new partner Martin) Chetlin. A scale Gulf Station, modeled after the Speedway ride (1960) at Lagoon Park in Salt Lake City, Utah, was likewise designed by Liff, Justh & Chetlin.

The Turnpike cemented the transition away from the gaudiness of Midcentury Modernism to its plainer final stage, which continued in other projects by Liff, Justh & Chetlin, such as a 1971 makeover of the Tower stand using planking and giant plastic circles. Their other projects like the Gran Prix and Penny Arcade increasingly abandoned ornamentation and pizazz altogether.

As Kennywood celebrates its 117th year, most Midcentury Modern touches are gone, though a few fun examples remain: wooden railings on the Jack Rabbit coaster, the streamlined cars on the Auto Ride, and shiny trains on the Pippin-turned-Thunderbolt. Johnny Rockets restaurant, new last year inside the carousel building, brought a Postmodern vibe of chrome, glass block and two-tone paint back to the former soda fountain. For traditionalists, the refreshment stands – Lucky, Midway and Star – still dazzle with original rooflines that aim skyward. Unlike today’s highway strips of standardized buildings and signs, Kennywood stays vibrant by mixing styles and eras. The park surprises and amuses even before one steps on a ride.

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An online exhibit, Jack Ray: Selling Glamour and Illusion, features text and images on Kennywood’s premier Modernist designer at virtualmuseum.ca. For a handy photographic history of the park, see David P. Hahner’s Kennywood (Arcadia, 2004). To learn about Kennywood’s place among other Keystone State amusement parks, see Jim Futrell’s Amusement Parks of Pennsylvania (Stackpole Books, 2002).

“The Dark Side of Kennywood” by Rick Davis is a historic look at Kennywood’s dark rides and fun houses, Kennywood’s own website offers nice summaries of the parks’s history, coasters and attractions.

Brian Butko is Director of Publications at the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh. He is the author, coauthor or editor of more than a dozen books, including Greetings from the Lincoln Highway, Roadside Attractions and Diners of Pennsylvania.He is currently writing books on Kennywood and Pittsburgh’s Luna Park.