Take Me Back (10 Photos)

Hand-Carved Carousels More Than 100 Years Old

Before fiberglass, carousel horses were carved from wood and painted by hand. Each of these ten machines was built between 1876 and 1922, and every one still takes riders.

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🦁 Kit Carson County Carousel — Burlington, Colorado, USA 🇺🇸

A lion with two cherubs clinging to its saddle, on the sixth carousel the Philadelphia Toboggan Company built, in 1905. It is the only antique carousel in America with its original paint on both the animals and the scenery panels. Kit Carson County bought it for $1,200 in 1928, and it still runs in Burlington.

💡 Lion Fact: Thieves stole four animals in 1981 and tried to take the lion as well, but it “proved too fierce,” KUNC reports.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Meanolduglyogre / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🎠 Jane’s Carousel — Brooklyn, New York, USA 🇺🇸

Forty-eight carved horses and two chariots turn in a glass box by architect Jean Nouvel in Brooklyn Bridge Park, right beside the bridge. The Philadelphia Toboggan Company built it in 1922 for Idora Park in Youngstown, Ohio.

💡 Restoration Fact: Jane and David Walentas bought it at auction in 1984, and Jane scraped off 62 years of “park paint” with an X-Acto knife, according to its historical marker.

📷 Photo: Rachelma114 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🐎 Flying Horse Carousel — Watch Hill, Rhode Island, USA 🇺🇸

No poles here. Each horse hangs from a chain and swings outward as the ride speeds up. The National Register nomination dates it to about 1876 and lists real horsehair manes and tails, leather saddles and the original agate eyes. Only kids aged 2 to 12 may ride in Watch Hill; grown-ups watch from the rail.

💡 Brass Ring Fact: Riders on the outer horses still reach for a brass ring that wins a free ride.

📷 Photo: Robellin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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💎 B&B Carousell — Coney Island, New York, USA 🇺🇸

Jewels, a gold mane and Lincoln on the saddle blanket: this is the Abraham Lincoln Centennial Horse, carved by Marcus Charles Illions in 1909, and its plaque says riders are not permitted. Most of its stablemates, by Charles Carmel, do carry riders on the last of the great Coney Island carousels, built in 1906 and now the centerpiece of Steeplechase Plaza.

💡 Rescue Fact: New York City bought the carousel in 2005 for $1.8 million and shipped it to Ohio, where carousel specialist Todd Goings restored the horses before they came home to the boardwalk.

📷 Photo: Peter Greenberg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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🌳 Central Park Carousel — Manhattan, New York, USA 🇺🇸

Solomon Stein and Harry Goldstein carved this carousel in 1908, and it later stood at a trolley terminal at Coney Island. It moved to Central Park in 1951, after a fire destroyed the park’s previous one. There are 57 hand-carved horses, and a ride costs $3.50.

💡 Mule Fact: An earlier carousel here was turned by a mule and a horse walking in circles in the basement.

📷 Photo: MusikAnimal / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🎟️ Dentzel Carousel — Glen Echo Park, Maryland, USA 🇺🇸

Rabbits, ostriches, a giraffe, a deer, a lion, a tiger and 40 horses have turned in the same 12-sided building at Glen Echo Park since 1921. When the owner sold it to a California company in 1970, local people raised the money to keep it.

💡 History Fact: In 1960 the carousel was the site of the first civil rights protest at Glen Echo Park. The park was desegregated the next year.

📷 Photo: chrisbrenschmidt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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🎬 Santa Monica Pier Carousel — Santa Monica, California, USA 🇺🇸

The Looff Hippodrome, a 1916 building on Santa Monica Pier with apartments upstairs, houses 44 carved horses. The carousel itself is a 1922 Philadelphia Toboggan Company machine, moved in here in 1947.

💡 Movie Fact: The carousel appears in The Sting (1973), with Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

📷 Photo: Mike McBey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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🚂 Geelong Carousel — Geelong, Victoria, Australia 🇦🇺

Made around 1892 by the Armitage-Herschell company of New York, this carousel worked on Mordialloc Pier from about the 1920s to the 1950s and now sits in a glass pavilion on the Geelong Waterfront. Twenty-four of its 36 horses, from the New York workshop of Charles W. F. Dare, are original.

💡 Steam Fact: Before it went electric, it ran on steam. The City of Geelong dates its old steam engine to 1890.

📷 Photo: Marshelec / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🪞 Crescent Park Looff Carousel — East Providence, Rhode Island, USA 🇺🇸

Charles I. D. Looff built it in 1895 as a showcase for buyers, so it shows off his range: 61 horses, a camel and four chariots. Local residents saved it in the 1970s, and it is still running in Crescent Park.

💡 Jewel Fact: In 1985 Rhode Island named it the “State Jewel of American Folk Art.”

📷 Photo: Daniel Case / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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🌹 C.W. Parker Carousel — Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada 🇨🇦

Built in 1912 in Leavenworth, Kansas, as C.W. Parker’s 119th carousel, it ran for decades at Vancouver’s Happyland and Playland, Heritage Burnaby records. In 1989 it was about to be sold horse by horse at a New York auction. A volunteer group, the Friends of the Carousel, set out to raise $350,000, and with help from the province and the City of Burnaby the carousel was bought. Today it runs at Burnaby Village Museum.

💡 Circus Fact: It toured with the Lone Star Circus until 1915, and records don’t show where it spent the next 21 years.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Ruth Hartnup / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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Which one is your favorite?