The Coney Island: The Documented History of Pottsville's Coney Island Paperback

In 1917 a Greek immigrant named Sarantos Palles opened a lunch counter in downtown Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He died in 1928, at twenty-eight. The counter he opened has been family owned and operated ever since, and it is still serving, around the clock, on West Market Street.

The Coney Island tells that story in ten short chapters, and then it does something most restaurant histories do not. It shows the work. Part two reproduces the documentary record behind the narrative, exhibit by exhibit: directory listings, census pages, newspaper advertisements, certificates, and photographs, each with its citation, its confidence label, and a plain statement of what it does and does not show.

The result is a local history a reader can check. The narrative rests on the record reproduced in the same volume, and where the record runs out, the book says so.

Printed copies of this edition are on deposit with the Schuylkill County Historical Society, the Pottsville Free Public Library, and the State Library of Pennsylvania. The book was the subject of a Sunday feature in the Republican Herald in August 2026.