Dickson Nickelodeon Floor Plan
The Dickson Nickelodeon featured ice cream, snacks, and plenty of pinball machines. Click photo to enlarge.
The Dickson Nickelodeon pinball arcade/ice cream parlor reached its peak expansion in Fall 1975. That October, one of my partners, architecture student Hank Colker, drew a floor plan showing the equipment layout of the Dickson Nickelodeon. Hank's plan serves as a guide for a photographic tour of the Dickson Nickelodeon.
The Floor Plan
Hank began by measuring the various rooms we used in the basement of Clara Dickson Hall at Cornell University:
- Recreation room (ice cream parlor)
- Women's cloak room (gameroom)
- Women's toilet room (dead storage)
- Men's cloak room (game and parts storage)
- Men's toilet room (dead storage)
- Kitchen (kitchen)
- Phone closet (office)
- Utility room (cleaning supplies)
Hank rendered a plan showing the existing conditions at a scale of ¼ inch to 1 foot. We reproduced Hank's plan as blue line and sepia prints.
Next Hank measured about 40 pieces of equipment we used in our nightly operations. He added the equipment to a sepia print, which we also copied as a blue line print.
The blue line prints remain legible 35 years later. You can download recent scans of those prints (PDF 770 KB).
With Hank's 1975 plan as a guide, we can tour the Dickson Nickelodeon by looking at some photos taken the same year.
The Gameroom
The heart of the Nickelodeon was its gameroom crammed full of pinball machines and arcade games. The floor plan shows a typical arrangement of games with eight pinball machines (15-20 and 22-23 in the plan), a Foosball table (24), and a shuffle bowling alley (26). We frequently changed the layout as we rotated other games into service: a shooting gallery, a baseball game, a hybrid pinball/baseball called Mystery Score, and more pinball machines. A penny scale (25) and a U-Select-It candy machine (21) collected small change.
When we first opened in Spring 1973 with many fewer games, we had space for a folding table where we sold donuts and gave away coffee. Over the next two years we obtained permission to grow by increments: first we added candy; next we moved the food service outside to the recreation room to make space for a soda cooler; we installed a jukebox; then we added ice cream with one and later two freezers; and finally we added four booths purchased from a long-closed restaurant.
One night, the Dean of Student Activities stopped by and was startled to discover the scope of activities he had approved.
The Dickson Nickelodeon brought new life to some very old equipment. Click photo to enlarge.
Ice Cream Parlor
We served ice cream, soda, donuts, candy, yogurt, chips, and coffee at a 20-foot counter (11, 13, 14) stretching between two support columns. The floor plan shows ice cream freezers (6, 8) and work tables (5, 7) behind the counter, with a slant shelf soda cooler (9) at one end of the work area. Until it tipped over and broke, a Northwestern Model 60 gum machine stood in front of the counter.
During Summer 1975, civil engineering grad student Steve Meier guided us through the design and construction of three rolling counter modules: one with a tiered candy display (14), one with cutouts for our hand cranked cash registers (13), and one flat-topped to display donuts (11). The modules were strong enough to hold wooden crates of 24 returnable soda bottles on the lower shelves and heavy mechanical cash registers (12) on top.
Our largest game, a completely mechanical Skee-Ball (2), was adjacent to the ice cream counter so that the staff could issue redemption tickets for high scores. Assorted stuffed animals hung above the Skee-Ball game.
A Seeburg HF100G 100-selection jukebox (1) provided music for a dime. Remote speakers (30) hung over the four booths (27). We later upgraded to a Seeburg KD200 jukebox, which displayed the 200 available titles on a rotating drum. Then we installed a Seeburg 3WA Wall-O-Matic remote selector at each booth. The counter staff had a small supply of marked dimes with which they could play their favorite songs.
In the back corner, a 'Pop' Corn Sez popcorn vending machine (28) and a slant shelf soda vending machine (29) offered more snacking opportunities.
At the end of each night, we cleaned up and then rolled most of our equipment back into the gameroom. The counters, ice-cream freezers, and soda cooler were permanently mounted on industrial strength castors. We placed small furniture dollies under work table legs and under the Skee-Ball legs. We rolled in the jukebox and stashed its remote speakers. An hour after closing, all that remained outside our locked gameroom door were the booths, the soda machine, and the tables (31, 33, 34) and seating (32, 37) provided by Cornell.
Printer-friendly version
