I love these photos of places like this from the past century. But one thing struck me as I scanned this one. I notice hundreds of men and women but relatively few children. I realize it might be Saturday or Sunday (still, where are the kids?). But if not, what are all these men (most women of the higher classes stayed at home) wandering around an amusement park on a work day? I hear how hard and long men, as well as many children,worked, that the "family vacation" as we know it didn't exist. Are all these people of the moneyed, leisure class? Many of these men are unaccompanied by a lady or a child, yet stroll around by the score. Are they truly awestruck by this boardwalk magnificence or checking out the place before allowing wife and kinder to come? Most puzzling.

[These weren't "amusement parks" in the present-day sense of a place where one took one's children and put them on rides; many, if not most, of the attractions were designed to entertain adults.- tterrace]

The entire structure is probably all wood, and most likely received a fresh coat of paint every spring. Also, I highly doubt that it is 37 stories high. Just my opinion.

[According to the New York Times, the steel-and-stucco observation tower, "an imposing edifice of white and gold in the French Renaissance style," was 370 feet tall, had two elevators that carried passengers to an observation deck, and 50-by-50-foot base "profusely decorated with bas-reliefs by Perry Hinton." If the tallest man at the base is 6 feet tall, the tower, based on its relative height, would rise around 230 feet; if the base really is 50 feet wide, more like 250 feet. - Dave]

I've seen the Dreamland Tower many times on Shorpy, but I never thought of it as particularly tall; maybe 5 stories or so, but this time I noticed the folks walking around underneath it and realized that the photos have not captured the scale very well. It took a little research to find, but turns out the tower was 375 feet high, or about the height of a 37-story building. The arches at the deck level are 50 feet tall alone. All in all, pretty impressive for 1904! The tower held a 600,000 gallon water storage tank for fighting fires, all to no avail, it turns out. The entire place burned to the ground only 7 years after opening.

The tripod set up in the right foreground appears to be a "Guess Your Weight" scale.