Riverview Amusement Park

Riverview Amusement Park is gone, but not forgotten. Many older Chicago residents still remember that grand amusement park as one of the greatest attractions Chicago had. Well, this book does a pretty darn good job of bringing the park back to life. It is chockfull of black-and-white pictures, covering its history from the original 19th century Sharpshooters Park, through to its final demise in 1967. Now, as you might expect with such a slim book, it cannot possibly cover all parts of the park's history in much depth. In fact, it is quite true that there are few post-WW2 pictures included. But, nonetheless, I found this to be an interesting history of the park, including many wonderful pictures and interesting text. I don't hesitate to recommend this wonderful book.

If you spent any time at all at Riverview Amusement Park in Chicago, then you will be thrilled to see the photos in this book. The writing of it's history is very good but brief and the book's writing is comprisied mostly of long captions under each photo with several anecdotes. The photos alone, will bring those childhood or teen-date memories back.

I grew up in Chicago on the Northwest side so was excited to find a book on Riverview Amusement Park because in my mind there has never been another amusement park like it after it closed. This book gives an excellent view on the background of the park and how it came to be through the years - in an odd bit of fate I ended up working on the grounds of the park after it was demolished and the City of Chicago built a police station on part of it.

a wonderful book about a chicago amusement park - one we miss dearly