Award-Winning Jump
Staff -- Consulting-Specifying Engineer, 5/1/2007
The New York Landmarks Conservancy has honored A/E design firm STV for its renovation of the Coney Island Parachute Jump Tower with the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards for 2006, the Conservancy's highest honor for outstanding preservation efforts.
In addition to providing condition assessment, planning, design, structural rehabilitation and construction oversight services, STV oversaw the lighting design team and provided the associated electrical design for power supply and circuiting, and structural design for mounting the fixtures to the existing tower. Leni Schwendinger Light Projects Ltd. was the lighting consultant.
The iconic Parachute Jump, at 277 ft. and weighing 170 tons, was the nation's most famous vertical thrill ride from 1941 to 1969, when it closed permanently. The Parachute Jump was modeled after parachute towers used by the military to train paratroopers in the 1930s and was originally featured at the 1939 Worlds Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, N.Y. It provided high drama to as many as half a million riders annually at Coney Island.
