White City Ruins & the Grand Stairway to Nowhere
White City Park Ruins and the Grand Stairway to Nowhere
Strolling along the shores of Spring Lake in Hamilton’s John A. Roebling Memorial Park you’ll find the random vestiges of one of New Jersey’s great lost amusement parks. Throughout the rocky bluffs that slopes up from the lake you can see the broken remains scattered amongst the dense vegetation along the cliffs. The most intact of these crumbling ruins is an ornate and grandiose concrete stairway that ascends up from lake level then seems to disappear into the vine choked underbrush before ever reaching the crest of the rise. These scant fragments are all that remain of Trenton’s White City amusement park.
In 1895, a trolley company purchase the land around the lake, which was already a popular picnicking location, and ran tracks from the Broad Street Park development to the bluffs above the picturesque lake. At the end of the line they built an amusement park in hopes that it would help attract customers and make the trolley line more profitable. The park opened in 1907.
At the time White City was a common name for amusement parks in the United States, the U.K., and Australia because of the White City and Midway Plaisance sections of the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893. The following decade the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 inspired a frenzy in amusement park building around the country with names like Luna Park and Electric Park. The parks gained popularity in the last few years of the 19th century and became wildly popular attractions in the first two decades of the 20th. Many cities had two even three of the White City/Electric Park/Luna Parks in their vicinity, with each trying to outdo the others with their latest attractions, making competition between the parks fierce.
Like most of these parks White City in Trenton featured a picnic area, carousel, roller coaster, a scenic railway, a midway where bands played music and a dancehall. It also boosted a movie theater, Mystic Maze, a Katzenjammer Castle and other such rides and attractions. There was a water flume ride that descended from the bluff above the park down the rocky slope and into the lake. Sections of the concrete 
chutes that carried the water and gondolas can still be seen today along the hills. On the lake itself visitors could enjoy activities like boating and fishing, and in the winter, ice-skating.
As automobiles became more common, offering people other options of places to go, the popularity of White City Park began to wane. The park finally closed in 1920 and by the end of the decade was completely abandoned.
In the late 1930s an organization called the Broad Street Civic Association was formed to curb further development in the area. By the late 1950s the group, with substantial financial backing from the Roebling family, had acquired 317 acres of land, including the White City Park area. The land, which would become the John A. Roebling Memorial Park, was given to Mercer County in 1957 for $1 and was designated as a wildlife refuge and for use as passive recreation.
The area above the bluffs where the trolley once dropped off park goers is now a residential neighborhood. But the ornate concrete staircase that once ushered visitors down the hill to Spring Lake is still relatively intact. Gazing up at it today from the water’s edge it’s not hard to imagine the throngs of visitors who once descended the grand old promenade on warm summer evenings, dressed in their Edwardian Era finery, as the sound of calliope music and the smell of hot popcorn wafted up from the park to greet them.
Sadly, only one of the original White City Parks which were once of common and popular around the country still exists today: Denver, Colorado’s White City, which opened in 1908 and now operates under the name Lakeside Amusement Park.
The preceding article is an excerpt from issue #54 of Weird NJ magazine, “Your Travel Guide to New Jersey’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets,” which is available on newsstands throughout the state and on the web at www.WeirdNJ.com. All contents ©Weird NJ and may not be reproduced by any means without permission.
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