The Fitchburg & Leominster Street Railway built Whalom Park in 1893.  It was the second trolley park in the country.  Trolley parks were picnic and recreation areas placed at the end of trolley cart lines to get people to use the lines during the weekends.  They usually had cafes and halls, which hosted events for the local town.  The parks also had spectacular fireworks displays on major holidays.  The advent of automobiles saw the decline in trolley usage and many trolley parks disappeared.  Those that survived, like Whalom, became amusement parks. 

Whalom Park was one of the tenth oldest amusement parks in the country.  It had one of the largest and oldest wooden roller coasters, which was torn down on Wednesday October 18th, 2006.  The amusement park was a fixture in New England, providing entertainment over the past 100 years to people throughout Massachusetts.  It had many of the classic rides including the Carousel, Flyer Comet Wooden Rollercoaster, Flying Scooters, Ferris Wheel, Paratrooper, Scrambler, Tilt-a-whirl, and others.  The dance hall was visited by many nationally known vaudeville and jazz acts in the first half of the century. 

The park closed down in 2000 and was eventually purchased by a development company.  The company completed demolition of the park in the fall of 2006 and plans on beginning the construction of a community there towards the end of this summer.  I have been photographing the park before its demolition and during the demolition with the permission of the developers.  I will continue my project as the community is built and begins to form, capturing an important transformative life cycle of the space.  I anticipate completing the project towards the end of 2008, or whenever construction has been competed on the community.

The project was featured at Whalom.org, a blog about the reconstruction of a new Whalom park.  When completed I hope to exhibit the photographs as a completed series in galleries and create a book with my photographs as well as stories and images from people that have personal connections with the space. 

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