originally posted on 4/1/2022
Having grown up and lived in the Pittsburgh region my entire life, I remember visiting several local and regional amusement parks as a child during the 1960s and 1970s. The most famous of these parks was Kennywood, which, thankfully, is still with us today. Our family also visited other southwestern Pennsylvania area parks such as Idlewild Park in Ligonier, Rainbow Gardens in White Oak and White Swan Park in Coraopolis. The last two, sadly, have been closed and almost forgotten for several decades. The other “big” amusement park besides Kennywood for which Pittsburgh was famous was West View Park, located in the small borough of West View, Pennsylvania, in the North Hills of Pittsburgh. Although my family visited many western Pennsylvania amusement parks over the years, alas, West View Park was not one of them.
When I heard that Mike Funyak was writing a book on West View Park and the T.M. Harton Company, I became very excited to learn more about the amusement park that was so close to where I now live but never had a chance to visit. I had read Charles Jacques’ book Goodbye, West View Park, Goodbye many years before. Although it is a wonderful chronicle of the saga of West View Park, I thought that the entire story of the park and of the T.M. Harton Company wasn’t fully told. Now, thanks to Funyak’s diligent and exhaustive research, including interviews with family members of those involved, many of their personal stories are now available.
Among the stories included within the pages filled with illustrations and vintage pictures of the park was one about company founder Theodore Marshal (T.M.) Harton, who began modestly, running a market. He bought a Ferris wheel, ran it as a concession and found that it could bring in much more money in just three short summer months than his year-round market could. The success of that first concession led him to lease out more amusement rides in several locations in the Northeast and Midwest states. He ultimately owned three amusement parks in total, with West View being his crown jewel. Among some of the early investors in West View Park when the park opened in 1906 were F.W. Henninger and A.S. McSwigan, who both were investors in crosstown rival Kennywood, which they took control of also in 1906. Readers learn that T.M. Harton died much too young at the age of 53 in February 1919 from the Spanish flu pandemic, a sobering thought in today’s age of COVID.
Funyak explains how the Beares family, in-laws to his brother George Harton, helped shape the T.M. Harton Company and West View Park into the popular Pittsburgh institution that it became. He describes the involvement of the Vettel brothers, Erwin and Edward, who came from Sandusky, Ohio, to ply their skilled trade as top roller coaster designers and builders for the T.M. Harton Company during the Golden Age of Roller Coasters in the 1920s. West View Park had several coasters that the Vettels built over the years, but among their crowning achievements at any park were the Dips and Racing Whippet. Funyak also touches on some of their other creations such as Blue Streak at Conneaut Lake Park, Cyclone at Lakeside Park in Denver and Zephyr at Pontchartrain Beach in New Orleans, to name just a few.
The book is full of personal stories and recollections by surviving family members, former employees and park fans. Their tales chronicle how the park struggled through the Great Depression and World War II, grew during the baby boom and tried to compete during the “theme park era” of the 1960s and 1970s until the park finally closed in 1977. So much is crammed into the book’s 269 pages that it is hard to put down. Even 45 years after the park’s closing, it’s hard not to get teary eyed reading the events that led up to the park’s ultimate fate. There are also several appendices featuring coasters built by the T.M. Harton Company, all of the rides at West View, promotions, managers and the like. Funyak tries to incorporate everything he can about the park and the company. It is unfortunate that so many enthusiasts never got to experience West View Park. The book is a true labor of love on Funyak’s part and one that should be in every enthusiast’s library.
— Dave Hahner, ACE Historian
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