“A remarkable feature of this dancing floor is that though it is situated fifty feet above ground no railing has been placed about it.”
A wealthy Pennsylvanian who maybe drank on occasion decided to spend a fortune building a garish pavilion with trees lit up by gas fires and a dance floor without railing 50 feet above the ground. An excerpt from an article about the dreamer pleasure park in the September 1, 1907 New York Times, which at the time spelled “Pittsburgh” without the “h”:
“PITTSBURG, Penn.–A small paradise is the hill back of the home of Thomas McDermott, at Glenfield, ten miles below Pittsburg, on the banks of the Ohio. It is because of McDermott, who is said to be wealthy, is spending so much money beautifying the little park, making it a Luna Park and World’s Pavilion combined, that his wife, Catherine McDermott, has entered court, asking that he be declared an habitual drunkard. Mrs. McDermott tried to have her husband a lunatic because of his reckless expenditures on landscape, but failed, and now she wants to cut off his drinks.
THE TIMES correspondent has had an interview with McDermott,and has also looked through his wonderful pleasure park, which he is building, his wife says, for himself. He says that he is a recluse. This is what makes McDermott so angry. He admits that for the time he does not want the public to know much about his queer venture, nor would anything have been known about it until he was ready had it not been that Mrs. McDermott became suspicious and entered suit to obtain control of his estate.
McDermott says he is and has been for some time preparing a treat for his neighbors; that it was and is his intention to invite every one to a grand ball and opening as soon as his monster pavilion is completed. McDermott, who is an Irishman, is very angry at his woman neighbors, whom he charges with having led his wife into wrong ways of thinking. He denies the allegation of Mrs. McDermott that he hasn’t been sober in thirty-nine years.
It is safe to assume that if McDermott is the real designer of the great pavilion, Mrs. McDermott will have great trouble proving her assertion. No inebriate ever designed and carried out the massive work now under way. It is a massive toy being erected by a man who has the money and who says he doesn’t care a blank what the public thinks; that it is his own money; he made it honestly, and will spend it as he sees fit. …
The pavilion is shaped like a woman’s hat, which, according to a certain humorist, is ‘anything with any shape at all.’ There just isn’t any shape to the McDermott pavillion. It wanders about, dodging trees here and encircling other trees, while in some places the roof and sides have been so constructed as to avoid hurting some favorite branch of a favorite tree. The whole thing is in the centre of a woody space which McDermott calls his ‘park.’
Rider Haggard never conceived of anything half so grotesque as that park when illuminated at night. There are at least sixty large trees, and from some point in each there springs a tongue of flame. The flame may come from a point high up or burst from near the base of the tree. Weird and uncanny the thing appears until one is told how it is done. It is natural gas which has been piped to each tree and the pipe cunningly concealed. In some cases the pipes are run up the tree quite a distance and out to the end of a branch. In other cases the pipes are run into old-fashioned chandeliers in the top branches of trees. This work was done by McDermott personally in spite of his sixty-odd years, and it was one of his delights to lead a visitor into his park and have his big trees lighted one by one.
On top of the pavilion is a dancing floor, through which immense poplar trees break here and there, for McDermott has been most careful of his trees. On account of the many trees included in the make-up of the dancing floor it will scarcely ever be popular with the waltzers. A remarkable feature of this dancing floor is that though it is situated fifty feet above ground no railing has been placed about it, nor will one be placed there. A couple might easily two-step off the dancing floor.”