George Cornelius Tilyou was an amusement park owner and inventor.
Background
He was the son of Peter Augustus and Ellen (Mahoney) Tilyou, was born on February 3, 1862 in New York City. His father, a descendant of a pioneer Huguenot family of New York, was a hotel proprietor at Coney Island, the neighboring seaside amusement resort, and thither the family removed when George was three years old.
Education
The boy received a part of a common-school education.
Career
At fourteen his business career may be said to have begun. That was in 1876, when many inland American visitors to the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia went on to New York and down to Coney Island, just for a look at the Atlantic Ocean.
George Tilyou set up a stand near his father's hotel, and as souvenirs of their ocean visit sold to these inlanders little boxes of sifted beach sand and bottles of sea water. In the course of one busy excursion day he earned enough money to enable him to enjoy a trip to the Centennial.
At seventeen, with a capital of $2. 50 invested in business cards, he began a successful career as a Coney Island real-estate operator. He laid out the Island's famous Bowery, a carnival amusement street barred to wheeled vehicles, and built Tilyou's Surf Theatre, the first show-house of importance at the resort.
In 1897 he founded his famous Steeplechase Park, which expanded until it covered nearly twenty acres. Twice it was wrecked by fire, and each time restored on a greater and more gorgeous scale. Tilyou originated most of the fun-making devices used in his amusement enterprises, their various objects being to give the patron nervous thrills as he was whirled or tumbled about, shot down steep slopes, and made to undergo weird experiences in dark chambers, or to subject him unexpectedly to the laughter of others and then give him his turn to laugh at those who followed him.
Among the devices which Tilyou patented, built, or perfected were the Human Roulette Wheel, the Human Pool Table, the Bounding Billows, the Earthquake Floor, the Blow Hole, the Eccentric Fountain, the Razzle Dazzle, the Third Degree Regions, the Electric Seat, the Hoodoo Room, the California Bats, the Funny Stairway, the Barrel of Love, the Aerial Thrill, and others. He believed in and always purveyed clean amusements.
In addition to his Coney Island park, he operated at one time or another similar large concessions at Atlantic City, Asbury Park, N. J. , Rockaway Beach, N. Y. , Revere Beach, Massachussets, Bridgeport, Connecticut, St. Louis, and San Francisco, several of these being likewise christened Steeplechase Park.
He died on November 30, 1914.
Achievements
Politics
He became a reformer in politics and was instrumental in the overthrow of John Y. McKane, the notorious political boss under whose rule Coney Island had taken on a distinctly rowdy tone. During this reform movement Tilyou was elected a justice of the peace.
Connections
He married Mary Elizabeth O'Donnell of New York in 1893, and she, with three sons (who continued his great amusement business) and two daughters, survived him.