lakeside amusement park 100 year anniversary
Lakeside Amusement Park celebrates it’s 100 year anniversary this year! It is one of the oldest still-standing amusement parks in the country. It just opened for the season this last Memorial Day weekend.
Lakeside was built in 1908 as White City in the Beaux-Arts style of the World’s Exposition Fair of 1893. It resides in it’s own city of Lakeside, CO, just outside of Denver.
The Tower of Jewels is decorated with 16,000 light bulbs. It is sometimes referred to as The Casino Tower, as Lakeside once housed a casino.
You can still see traces of the Casino Theatre signage on the front east side of the main building.
The Casino Theatre once had a prison theme, where patrons would be served drinks in tin cups, and a mock prison band would play music behind bars!
This wonderful historic park is still family owned and run by the Krasner family. Benjamin Krasner bought the park in the 1930s and gave it a wild Art Deco makeover, with the aid of renowned architect Richard Crowther.
One of Richard Crowther’s beautiful Art Deco Moderne ticket booths.
Lakeside Amusement Park is very inexpensive to visit. A nominal $2.50 entry fee gets you into the park! And to me, that is quite a bargain to enjoy all this history!
The Streamline Moderne style of the Auto Skooter bumper cars.
One of the joys of Lakeside is that they take pride in their history and retain as much of the parks historic past as possible.
The Skoota bumper boats
Richard Crowther’s designs are famous for their imaginative use of neon lighting. I’ll post night time shots of Lakeside as soon as the weather cooperates!
Richard Crowther also designed the cylindrical Cooper Cinerama Theatre on Colorado Avenue, which is now repurposed as an electronics store, I believe.
Lakeside’s Merry Go Round is one of the parks most interesting features.
It is made up of four rows of salvaged animals from many different carousels, making it one of the most unique Merry-Go-Rounds you will ever see. . .
goats, pigs, bears, pink rabbits. . .
green rabbits, dogs, mules, black pigs. . .
and finally a Knight’s Templar horse
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The Cooper Theater on Colorado Boulevard was torn down and now a book store is on the site. I think you are confusing it with the Continental which is about 1/2-3/4 of a mile south and is now an ultimate electronics store.