When Stephen R. Wilk was an undergrad at MIT in the ’70s, he took the T to the Blue Line station in Revere one day, expecting to be wowed by a mix of amusements and a long boardwalk on the beach, like the ones on the Jersey Shore in his native Garden State.
“I couldn’t find anything there. I found myself shouting ‘Where’s the beach?’,” he said during a chat in the backyard of the Fairchild Avenue home he shares with wife Jill Silvester, daughter Carolyn, “and lots of cats.”
Wilk had gone in search of Wonderland, the largest amusement park in New England situated on 25 acres of land near Revere Beach when it opened May 30, 1906. Instead, he found Wonderland Greyhound Park, Wonderland Ballroom and the Wonderland subway station.
But no carnival site. And no beach within sight.
His interest was piqued, and he wondered whatever happened to the amusement park. For years he sought information on Wonderland, and the more research he did, the more fascinated he became with the place. Three years ago, Wilk, an optical engineer and project manager at XENON Corp. in Wilmington who holds a PhD in physics and a master’s degree in engineering, decided it would be a great subject for a book.
“Lost Wonderland: The Brief and Brilliant Life of Boston’s Million Dollar Amusement Park” is being published by the University of Massachusetts Press with an October release date. The book can be preordered on the publisher’s website and will be available in select bookstores and from online retailers.
Based on the wild amusement parks in Coney Island, Wonderland had the world’s largest Shoot the Chutes ride, which had thrilled those at the St. Louis World’s Fair two years earlier. It had a scenic railway, an Indian village and Wild West Show, an open-air circus with acts that changed weekly, a wild animal show, and a Fighting the Flames show with real flames and actual firemen. More than 100,000 people attended that first day of Memorial Day weekend in 1906. That summer, attendance reached two million.
Five years later, Wonderland amusement park closed for good. Today, nothing remains of the park, which sat primarily where the Wonderland Marketplace shopping mall is today. Many current Revere residents aren’t aware of its history.
Wilk tells the story in lively fashion, focusing on the larger-than-life characters that created and provided the entertainment. “It’s a story of ambition, creativity, talent, love, marriage, divorce, and betrayal … but no deaths,” said Wilk.
It’s a hoot to read, informative and wildly entertaining. You’ll meet singing dogs, bowling monkeys, alligator wrestlers and Princess Trixie, a horse that played musical instruments and could spell and solve math problems. Mother Berlo’s Drowning Act featured 10 kids, all excellent swimmers except for one who couldn’t swim a stroke.
You’ll meet Chiquita, “The Doll Lady,” who was billed as “the Smallest Representative of Her Sex: Twenty Eight Inches in Height, Perfect in Form and Figure” and who fell in love with the park’s young cornet player, leading to much intrigue. Then there’s Annette Kellermann, the “Million Dollar Mermaid,” whose attempts to swim the English Channel were unsuccessful and who controversially claimed the first time she went out to practice her swimming routine on Revere Beach she was arrested for indecent exposure because of her tight bathing suit. You’ll also read about the early years’ blackface minstrel shows and “Darktown,” which provided a look at the antebellum slave life, and how Wonderland, in its latter years, featured positive, informative lectures on Black history. A Black infant was also included in its scientific Baby Incubator exhibit, a rarity at the turn of the 20th century.
This is not Wilk’s first book: 1999’s “Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon” (Oxford University Press), is still in print. A follow-up to 2013’s “How the Ray Gun Got Its Zap!” will also be available by year’s end; it will be his fifth book. He has also written numerous short stories and articles starting in 1979 when his MIT thesis based on The Physics of Karate was published in Scientific American magazine.
“I’ve been writing since I was 6 or 7 years old. They were abysmal stories but I didn’t know it at the time, even though my teachers pointed out all my flaws,” he said, then flashed a wry smile. “I wrote a story for Boy’s Life, which was rejected, but since I rode my bike to drop it off they gave me a tour of their headquarters.”
Wilk, a lover of sci-fi and “all sorts of odd things,” grew up in South River, N.J. (“Exit 9”) and his wife grew up in Grover’s Mill (“Exit 10”), the town where the Martians landed in Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast. They hadn’t met until both were students in Boston, even though Wilk discovered years later he often rode his bike past her family’s house.
“I try to write the kind of book I’d like to read myself,” said Wilk.
For his next writing projects, Wilk is sticking around Revere, researching the amusement areas in the city’s Point of Pines neighborhood and exploring a privately-owned submarine that was based there and open to the public.
