Galvestonians also transformed the structure of their city government. During reconstruction, a five-man commission replaced the mayor and board of aldermen. Initially viewed as an emergency measure, the commission form of government was so efficient that Galveston permanently adopted the scheme. The "Galveston Plan" was widely imitated by other cities and became a benchmark of early twentieth-century municipal reform. The powerful hurricane's devastating impact on the people of Galveston captured the nation's imagination long after the water subsided and the town was rebuilt. By 1904, the "Galveston Flood" amusement park attraction at New York's Coney Island promised patrons a first-hand glimpse of the "scene of horror." On a stage two-hundred-feet-square, the audience watched a simulation of Galveston's destruction. A 1904 guidebook describes the show:
Thunder, lightning, the fury of the wind until the maddened waters leap from the depths, rush wildly over the city, carrying death before it, leaving a scene of despair after it--all of which forms an exhibition entirely new in the annals of the European or American stage.History of Coney Island (New York: Burroughs & Co., 1904.)
