Excerpt from Neglected Coney Island Some eighteen years ago, His Honor, the present mayor of the City of New York, performed at Coney Island a service that started him on his public career, but on one, however, that concerned only the political situation. It gave no consideration to the physical and moral necessities. Since that time Coney Island has-been, on separate occasions, a portion of the former City of Brooklyn, and later, by the provisions of the Consolidation Act, merged with the City of Greater New York. During those periods and until recently the West End section was in its original condition, an area of sand dunes and a few scattered houses and three or four eleemosynary institutions. Ignored and neglected as it was, a large number of families, recognizing the natural advantages of the section, its abundance of pure air and sunshine, and appreciating the great possibilities for physical cleanliness afforded by the ocean, had built their homes there. The advantages observed by the home builders were also noted by the general public. And as a sequence, the rearing of hotels, bathing establishments and other speculative investments had soon capitalized all of the natural advantages for the benefit of the few and to the exclusion of the many. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.