Wonderland Amusement Park, Minneapolis

“Another example of Couney’s hospitals was at Wonderland Amusement Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at Lake Street and 31st Avenue. The exhibit at Wonderland, while short-lived, was extremely successful. It opened in 1905, along with the amusement park itself. Unlike at the Coney Island amusement park, according to Minneapolis Post, the incubator babies were the main attraction at Wonderland. The hospital building itself was two stories tall. The Minneapolis Journal reported that ‘the first floor will be devoted to a room in which the incubators…will be exhibited. A room adjoining will be fitted up as a model nursery…The rooms upstairs are the living rooms’ for the doctors and nurses. The Minneapolis Times informed potential visitors that ‘to the spectator the incubator babies will appear to be living undisturbed lives behind the glass doors of their castles.’ Doctors usually referred infants to the hospital as a last resort.” — “Incubator Baby Shows: A Medical and Social Frontier,” by Hannah Lieberman.

Wonderland closed in 1912, a victim of debts, bad weather, and decreasing attendance. The Infant Incubator Institute, now an apartment building on the corner of 31st Avenue and 31st Street, is the amusement park’s only surviving structure. Eleven of the infants that did not survive are buried at the Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery.

• Premature Babies were Displayed at Lake Street Amusement Park, from the Minneapolis Pioneers and Socials History Page.
• Wonderland Park is Well Opened, from The Minneapolis Journal, May 29, 1905, page 7.
• The Incubator Babies at Wonderland Park, from the Minneapolis Journal, May 20, 1905, page 10.
• The Child Hatchery, from City Pages.
• Incubator Baby Shows: A Medical and Social Frontier, by Hannah Lieberman, from The History Teacher 35.1, November, 2001.

Martin Arthur Couney

• Short biography of Martin Couney
• Martin Couney, Wikipedia
• Martin Couney’s Obituary, from The New York Times, March 2, 1950.

Martin Couney Exhibits in World’s Fairs and National Expositions

• Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl’s Court, 1897
• Trans-Mississippi Exposition, Omaha, 1898
• Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901
• Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland, 1905
• Panama-Pacific International Exposition San Francisco, 1915
• Century of Progress International Exposition, Chicago, 1933-34
• New York World’s Fair, New York, 1939-1940

Martin Couney Sideshows in Amusement Parks

• Coney Island Sideshow at Luna Park
• Coney Island Sideshow at Dreamland
• Lakeside Amusement Park, Denver.
• Luna Park, Pittsburgh
• Wonderland – Minneapolis and St. Paul
• Wonderland – Revere Beach
• Boardwalk – Atlantic City
• White City Amusement Park – Chicago
• White City Amusement Park, Indianapolis, Indiana
• White City Amusement Park, Cleveland, Ohio

Recent Books

• The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, by Dawn Raffel, Blue Rider Press, ISBN 0399175741
• Miracle at Coney Island, by Claire Prentice (Kindle or audiobook)

General Articles

General articles about Martin Couney and his exhibits are linked below. Additional links may be found in specific posts about his participation in expositions or sideshows.

Keep in mind that many of these were written before the full facts about Martin Couney’s background became known, or have not incorporated that new information, so they include information from his self-invented background legend.

• Incubator Baby Sideshows, by William Silverman, from Pediatrics.
• Postscript to Incubator-Baby Sideshows, by William. Silverman, from Pediatrics
• Martin Couney’s Story Revisited, by William Silverman, from Pediatrics
• Martin Couney’s Obituary, from The New York Times, March 2, 1950.
• A Patron of the Premies, by A. J. Liebling, from The New Yorker
• The Coney Island Baby Laboratory, by Gary R. Brown, from American Heritage Invention and Technology Magazine
• American Characters: Martin Couney, by Richard Snow, from American Heritage Magazine
• The Man Who Ran a Carnival Attraction… by Claire Prentice, from Smithsonian Magazine
• Life under Glass, audio documentary by Claire Prentice, from the BBC
• Martin Couney and Incubator Exhibits from 1896 to 1943, from the Embryo Project
• The Incubator Baby and Niagara Falls, by Arthur Brisbane, from The Cosmopolitan
• Babies on Display, from NPR
• Beginner’s Luck, from Family Circle Magazine 1993
• Coney Island’s Incubator Babies, by Rebecca Rego Barry, from JSTOR Daily
• The Infantorium, by Katie Shornton, from 99% Invisible
• How One Man Saved a Generation of Premature Babies, from BBC News
• Baby Incubators: From Boardwalk Sideshow to Medical Marvel, by Erin Blackmore, from History.Com
• Babies in Sideshows, by Julie Andreson, from Engines of our Ingenuity
• Dr. Martin Couney, from Coney Island History Project
• “The Use of Incubators for Infants,” The Lancet, May 29, 1897.
• “The Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl’s Court,” The Lancet, July 17, 1897.
• Incubator Baby Shows: A Medical and Social Frontier, by Hannah Lieberman, from The History Teacher 35.1, November, 2001.
• The Child Hatchery, from City Pages.

Last Updated on 04/29/23