Editorial illustration for "To Heaven by Subway," published in Fortune Magazine, August, 1938. Tempera on panel. 13x16 inches. Signed lower right center. Also signed verso"Robert Riggs Esq." Panel dated May 28, 1938.
"To Heaven by Subway" was published anonymously in the August 1938 issue of Fortune magazine. The author provided a thorough and intriguing description of Coney Island near the end of the Great Depression. They describe Coney as being in the era of the "nickel empire," which he or she argues began with the extension of the subway in 1920 and reached its peak in the middle of that decade.
The author offers a colorful picture of Coney's many attractions and its visitors, including the games along the Bowery. The image depicts amusement-seekers of all backgrounds playing games such as the Nickelodeon, a punching bag, and a Love Tester Machine.
Source: Parascandola, Louis, and John Parascandola, A Coney Island Reader: Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion (New York, NY, 2014; online edn, Columbia Scholarship Online, 19 Nov. 2015), https://doi.org/10.7312/columbia/9780231165730.001.0001, accessed 1 Nov. 2023.
