Commission To Consider Forest Park Carousel
Efforts to have the Forest Park Carousel recognized as a New York City landmark officially began to spin on Tuesday, May 14, when the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) agreed to put the proposal on its radar.
The commission voted to “calendar” a future public hearing on potentially granting landmark status to the historic merry-go-round located off Forest Park Drive and Woodhaven Boulevard, which reopened last year after being left without an operator for several years.
In its “statement of significance,” the LPC noted that the Forest Park Carousel is one of only two such rides still in operation in the United States which were designed by Daniel C. Muller, “a leading member of the Philadelphia school of carousel carving.” The carousel has 55 wooden horses and other figures by which children of all ages can take a spin as well as two chariots with bench seating and a band organ in the center of the ride.
Most of the horses and figures “are credited to Muller’s Philadelphia workshop, but two of the horses are attributed to the Brooklyn carver Charles Carmel, and another to Muller’s earlier employer, William Dentzel, who built the park’s first carousel,” the LPC indicated in its statement.
The present carousel-which was imported during the 1970s to Queens from the Lakeview amusement park in Dracut, Mass.-replaced an earlier carousel which operated in Forest Park between 1918 and 1966. That merry-go-round, according to the LPC, had been destroyed by a fire.
The second version of the Forest Park Carousel, which was dedicated in 1973, featured a “modernist pavilion” designed by Victor Christ Janer. The merry-go-round was shut down in 1985 and remained closed for four years while a full restoration took place.
When the restoration was completed in 1989, visitors found new “cast sculptural elements” added to the projecting cornice “that encircles the conical wood and steel platform.” Murals created by artists Jonathan Lev in 2002 were painted on to 18 rounding board panels.
But the Forest Park Carousel was closed to the public in 2008 after the previous operator lost its contract with the Parks Department. Following four years of dormancy, the ride was reopened in 2012 under the management of New York Carousel, which also operates the merry-goround at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
One of Woodhaven’s two representatives of the City Council expressed her support of the LPC’s consideration of landmark status for the Forest Park Carousel.
“I am encouraged by the Landmarks
Preservation Commission’s decision to bring landmark status of the Forest Park Carousel one step closer to reality,” said City Council Member Elizabeth Crowley in a statement. “This designation will protect and preserve the carousel for future generations to come. I look forward to working with the commission and the concesssioner to ensure this neighborhood treasure is preserved.”
Maria Thomson, executive director of the Greater Woodhaven Development Corporation (GWDC), told the Times Newsweekly she was pleased with the LPC’s decision to calendar the landmark plan for the carousel, adding that “it’s a great step in the right direction.” The GWDC, she noted, has worked for more than 20 years to preserve and protect the carousel and keep it operational for local families.
“I’ve been really wanting this for our carousel so we can preserve this perpetually for our children and their children’s children,” Thomson said. “Hopefully, the LPC will follow through, calendar it and landmark it for us. I couldn’t be happier that at least they’re considering it and being on the road to actually landmarking the carousel.”
Ed Wendell, president of the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association, added that the organization and others in the neighborhood “want what’s best for the carousel,” but expressed a desire to know more about the potential impact of landmarking the carousel on its operation.
“The devil is in the details. What does it mean if they’re going to landmark it?” Wendell said in a phone interview with the Times Newsweekly. “What kind of restrictions is it going to place on the vendor toward doing repairs? These are questions I’m sure [the commission] could answer very easily. I’m sure they have the best interest of the carousel in mind.”
“We want what’s best for the carousel,” Wendell added. “We look forward to hearing the proposal. Once [the public hearing is] on the calendar,” the civic group-as well as the Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society, of which Wendell also serves as president-hope to provide testimony and input on the potential landmarking of the carousel.
In a statement published in the New York Daily News, Ami Abramson of New York Carousel indicated that the company was “open to the possibility of landmarking” while also insuring that the firm can continue to operate the ride.
