Businessman

Junior Entrepreneur.

George C. Tilyou was born in New York City on 3 February 1862. His father was a hotel proprietor at Coney Island. The younger Tilyou began his business career at age fourteen when he sold little boxes of sifted beach sand and bottles of seawater as souvenirs to visitors on Coney Island. In one day Tilyou made enough money to finance his own trip to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition (1876).

Coney Island Development.

With an initial investment of only $2.50, Tilyou became one of the most successful businessmen on Coney Island. He laid out the famous Bowery, a carnival amusement street barred to wheeled vehicles, and built Tilyou's Surf Theatre, the first important show house at the resort. In 1897 he built Steeplechase Park, which quickly expanded to fifteen acres. It was wrecked by fire in 1907, but Tilyou restored it on a grander scale. He originated...