New York Aquarium

New York Aquarium is a public aquarium at 602 Surf Avenue in Coney Island, Brooklyn, occupying a fourteen-acre waterfront site beside the Riegelmann Boardwalk and the Atlantic Ocean. Established in 1896 at Castle Garden, now known as Castle Clinton, in Battery Park, Manhattan, it is the oldest continuously operating aquarium in the United States. The New York Zoological Society, today known as the Wildlife Conservation Society, assumed responsibility for the institution in 1902. Following the closure of its original Manhattan premises in 1941, the collection was temporarily transferred to the Bronx Zoo while a permanent replacement was developed on the former site of Coney Island’s Dreamland amusement park. The new aquarium opened in 1957 and gradually expanded into a complex of exhibition halls, outdoor habitats, research facilities and aquatic performance areas. Hurricane Sandy caused extensive flooding and infrastructure damage in October 2012, forcing a prolonged programme of repairs and redevelopment. One of the most significant additions was Ocean Wonders: Sharks!, a 57,500-square-foot exhibition building that opened in June 2018. Its distinctive curved exterior is covered by thousands of aluminium panels, while the interior contains large underwater viewing windows, tunnels and habitats for sharks, rays, sea turtles and other marine species. Further restoration work continued after its opening, with the full aquarium complex reopening in July 2022.

New York Aquarium has appeared in Bored to Death (2009–2011) and The Flight Attendant (2020–2022), with both HBO productions making use of the real Coney Island attraction for scenes involving the main characters and their families. Bored to Death uses the aquarium for a particularly important revelation concerning Jonathan Ames and his search for his biological father, while The Flight Attendant features its Ocean Wonders: Sharks! exhibition during Cassie Bowden’s increasingly strained reunion with her brother and his family. The aquarium also appears in Joan Osborne’s music video for «One of Us» (1996), which was filmed around Coney Island and incorporates several recognisable landmarks from the neighbourhood.

In Bored to Death (2009–2011), New York Aquarium appears in the seventh episode of the third season, «Forget the Herring» (2011), providing the setting for one of the series’ most unexpected revelations. Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman, has been searching for his biological father after learning that the man who raised him was sterile. Together with Rose, played by Isla Fisher, he follows a trail that eventually leads to Harrison Bergeron, a former sperm-bank operator now running a hat shop in Coney Island. After initially claiming that the donor records are no longer available, Bergeron telephones Jonathan later that evening and asks him to meet at what he calls the Brooklyn Aquarium. Jonathan leaves George Christopher’s musical performance and takes a taxi to Coney Island, where he finds Bergeron waiting among the aquarium’s fish tanks. Bergeron nervously explains that the sperm bank never maintained any donor records because he personally supplied all the sperm, thereby avoiding the expense of paying donors. Jonathan slowly realises that Bergeron is his biological father, only for the conversation to take an even more disturbing turn when Bergeron mentions how pleased he was to meet both Jonathan and his daughter Rose earlier that day. Jonathan is horrified to discover that Rose, with whom he has just begun a sexual relationship, is actually his half-sister. The revelation brings the episode to an abrupt and particularly memorable conclusion inside the real New York Aquarium.

In The Flight Attendant (2020–2022), New York Aquarium is featured in the fourth episode of the first season, «Conspiracy Theories» (2020). Cassie Bowden, played by Kaley Cuoco, meets her brother Davey, his husband Rick and their two young daughters, Maya and Eve, for a family outing at Coney Island. The scenes were filmed inside the aquarium’s Ocean Wonders: Sharks! exhibition, where the family walks through the viewing areas and observes the marine life behind the enormous glass panels. Although Cassie is preoccupied with her increasingly dangerous investigation into the murder of Alex Sokolov, she is delighted to see her nieces and attempts to play the role of a generous and entertaining aunt. Trouble begins in the aquarium’s gift shop when the girls ask for stuffed whale toys. Davey and Rick refuse, explaining that they are trying to teach their daughters that they cannot always have everything they want. Cassie disregards their decision and secretly purchases the toys anyway, even encouraging the children to conceal the gifts from their parents. The apparently minor incident becomes considerably more serious later that evening, when Davey discovers what Cassie has done and confronts her over dinner. Their argument gradually exposes painful memories of their childhood, particularly their alcoholic father and his treatment of Davey compared with Cassie. The aquarium sequence therefore provides more than a brief family excursion, establishing the conflict that leads to one of the season’s most revealing conversations about Cassie’s past.

In Joan Osborne’s music video for «One of Us» (1996), New York Aquarium appears among several recognisable Coney Island landmarks used to illustrate everyday life in New York. Directed by Mark Seliger and Fred Woodward, the video combines footage of Osborne performing the song with images of ordinary people, vintage-style sepia sequences and views of the amusement attractions along Coney Island. The aquarium is included in the location footage alongside the area’s roller coasters and Ferris wheel, providing a glimpse of the complex more than fifteen years before Hurricane Sandy and over two decades before the opening of Ocean Wonders: Sharks!. Rather than presenting a conventional performance filmed inside the aquarium, the video incorporates the location into a wider portrait of Coney Island that complements the song’s central idea of encountering God as an ordinary person.

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