Steeplechase Park opened at Coney Island in 1897 and became one of the great amusement parks of the “People’s Playground,” although Black visitors faced segregation at some of Coney Island’s recreational facilities. After Steeplechase closed in 1964, developer Fred Trump purchased the property and demolished its Pavilion of Fun while seeking approval to build apartments. Those plans were never realized. The Parachute Jump, now a landmark, is the most prominent surviving remnant of the original park.

I was seven when my family moved from the Bronx to a white middle-class suburb in New Jersey. When I photographed the remains of Steeplechase Park in 1981, I knew Coney Island as entertainment and spectacle; later research connected the site to Fred Trump, Woody Guthrie and the much larger history of racial exclusion in housing that also shaped the suburbs where I grew up.