Starlight Park was an amusement park

Amusement park

thumb|Cinderella Castle in [[Magic Kingdom]], [[Disney World]]Amusement and theme parks are terms for a group of entertainment attractions and rides and other events in a location for the enjoyment of large numbers of people...

 near West Farms Square on the Bronx River

Bronx River

The Bronx River, approximately long, flows through southeast New York in the United States. It is named after colonial settler Jonas Bronck. The Bronx River is the only fresh water river in New York City....

 in the New York borough of The Bronx

The Bronx

The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...

 from 1918 to 1932. It was first called "Exposition Park", as the grounds were originally laid out from 1917 to 1918 for the Bronx International Exposition of Science, Arts and Industries in 1918. It was renamed shortly after the exposition's close.

Starlight Park featured fireworks displays, a roller coaster

Roller coaster

The roller coaster is a popular amusement ride developed for amusement parks and modern theme parks. LaMarcus Adna Thompson patented the first coasters on January 20, 1885...

, a swimming pool, and carnival games of skill and chance. It also contained a stadium which was the home field of the New York Giants

New York Giants (soccer)

New York Giants was a name used by three different New York soccer teams. Two of these teams were associated with the New York Giants baseball franchise. The first team that used the name played in the American League of Professional Football in 1894...

 soccer team, but which also featured circuses, boxing and professional wrestling matches, and "midget auto racing". The 15,000-seat stadium came to be called the New York Coliseum

New York Coliseum

The New York Coliseum was a convention center that stood on Columbus Circle in New York City from 1956 to 2000. It was designed by architects Leon and Lionel Levy in a modified international style, and included both a low building with exhibition space and a 26-story office block.-History:The...

 (no relation to the building with that name in Columbus Circle

Columbus Circle

Columbus Circle, named for Christopher Columbus, is a major landmark and point of attraction in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located at the intersection of Eighth Avenue, Broadway, Central Park South , and Central Park West, at the southwest corner of Central Park. It is the point from...

). The stadium was originally built for the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, and was transported to 177th Street and Devoe Avenue in the Bronx in 1928.

Starting in 1926, the park offered free programs of opera music in the summer, in an attempt to give the masses access to high culture at no cost. The shows were given in the open air until the Starlight Park Stadium was erected in 1928, and occurred in the stadium afterwards. On Saturday nights, big band jazz played for dancers on an outdoor dancefloor. In its time, it was considered something of a "blue collar country club".

For many years, one of the most popular attractions in the park was the submarine . After being constructed by Irish-American inventor John Philip Holland

John Philip Holland

John Philip Holland was an Irish engineer who developed the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the U.S...

 in 1888, Holland became the first submarine commissioned by the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

. She had been maintained by the Navy at Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....

 for training purposes until 1914, when she became a museum ship

Museum ship

A museum ship, or sometimes memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public, for educational or memorial purposes...

 in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. The submarine then moved to Starlight Park in 1918 and remained there until 1932, when she was disassembled for scrap as part of the entire park's demolition.

In 1922, a roller coaster accident killed one rider. In 1947, the stucco and wood bathing pavilion was destroyed by a fire.