Delmar Gardens
Delmar Gardens of Oklahoma City was an amusement park in Oklahoma City that operated from 1902 to 1910.
After the emergence of New York's Coney Island, the fad of waterside amusement parks graced with wooden boardwalks spread across the country. Although Oklahoma City was only founded in 1889, civic leaders were eager to provide similar facilities in Oklahoma Territory.
John Sinopoulo and Joseph Marre, who trained at the original Delmar Gardens in St. Louis, built the park on the east bank of the North Canadian River on property owned by civic leader and developer Charles Colcord's Colcord Park Corporation. The park was located on about 40 acres (160,000 m2) between Reno, Western and the river. Today's Wheeler Park constituted the southeast boundary of the complex. The park boasted of a 3,000 seat theater, dance pavilion, a horse racing track, baseball field, swimming pool, exotic animal zoo, railway, a boardwalk beer garden, amusement rides, a penny arcade, a floating wedding chapel, and a hotel and restaurant. The Gardens and Park were served by the city's extensive trolley service, which brought visitors from suburbs miles away in a matter of minutes.
Sinopoulo was a Greek immigrant who wanted to build a stylish amusement complex that held a uniting theme throughout a park setting. He used an elaborate Art Nouveau styling that blended blissfully with the surrounding woods and river. The interior of the Delmar Garden Theater was designed in intricate Victorian gingerbread, with Art Nouveau accents. Orchestra seating held leather upholstered opera chairs, box seats contained comfortable wicker chairs and love-seats, and three horseshoe shaped balconies were equipped with steep pitch bleachers. While the auditorium had soft gas lighting, the heavily draped stage was brilliantly illuminated by electric switchboard lighting. Built to be a vaudeville house, Delmar Garden Theater also installed film equipment in 1903 to feature The Great Train Robbery, which ran for eleven weeks. Regardless of the fact that film showings at the Delmar proved to be successful, management preferred to continue mainly as a two-a-day vaudeville venue, with only an occasional movie thrown in at the end of a weak vaudeville program. (One advantage for vaudevillians appearing on the family oriented Delmar stage was that they could also present "adult material" in late night sketches at the Delmar Saloon).
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