page_title: Percy G. Williams
section_title: Bergen Beach
hierarchical_section_title: Percy G. Williams / Bergen Beach
caption_attribution_description: English: Postcard c. 1905 of the boardwalk at Bergen Beach amusement park, which was open from 1896 to 1918
context_page_description: Percy Garnett Williams was an American actor who became a travelling medicine salesman, real estate investor, amusement park operator and vaudeville theater owner and manager. He ran the Greater New York Circuit of first-class venues. Williams was known for giving generous pay and good working conditions to performers. At his death, he endowed his Long Island house as a retirement home for aged and destitute actors.
context_section_description: Williams began investing in real estate around the end of the 1880s. He partnered with Thomas Adams, the chewing gum magnate, to buy what is now Bergen Beach, Brooklyn. This was 300 acres (120 ha) of marshland in Brooklyn west of Rockaway and south of Flatbush on Jamaica Bay.
  Williams and Adams had meant to build housing, but decided to emulate the successful Coney Island.
  They converted Bergen Island into a resort.
  It was accessible via the Flatbush Avenue streetcar, now the B41 bus route.
  The resort opened in 1893 with a dance hall, concessions, rides and a pier.
  The Percy Williams Amusement park opened in June 1896, later just called Bergen Beach.
  Williams also opened Zip's Casino, a beer hall in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
  In March 1902 the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company offered to buy the Bergen Beach resort, but would not meet Williams' price.
  For a while trolley service to the beach was cut and business suffered, but trolley service was later improved again.
  The resort was damaged by two fires in 1904 and 1910.
  It was open again by 1915, but had closed by 1919.
caption: Boardwalk of Bergen Beach
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