Friday, May 11, 2012

Forest Park carousel to soon spin again


From The Forum:

Forest Park Carousel will open by Memorial Day weekend thanks to the Department of Parks and Recreation settling on an operator.

This week, Parks announced New York Carousel Entertainment won the bid to operate the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Carousel and the long-shuttered Forest Park Carousel.

Parks and New York Carousel are now inking the final details of the agreement, but the company was granted a work permit to get the carousels ready for an opening this month, a Parks Department spokesman said.

The announcement of an operator was supposed to come in March, and after two months of tense waiting, community members were surprised by the good news.

12 comments:

Joe said...

I remember those horses as a kid. I hope the children of illegal Immigrants don't pee and carve all over them.
Those valuable Bavarian hand crafted horses should be safe in a museum and replicas used.
Parks can not be trusted to keep an eye on the vender operating, securing and maintaining this piece of irreplaceable history.

Take a good look at what Parks has allowed to become of The Flushing Meadow Park carousel. 100s of parts have been broken or pinched from it . The city wont tune it or have parts, pipes or even 1 reed made for it !
-Its horrible and scarey to listen to and worse to actually look at up close. I'm surprised nobody's been killed being it spins pretty fast

Anonymous said...

Local kids do stuff like that as well, Joe.

Anonymous said...

breaking news.

Woodhaven Residents Block Association said...

Just to clarify -- every girl I ever dated called me back afterwards. You can check with both of them :-)

Ed Wendell
President
Woodhaven Residents' Block Association

Anonymous said...

Anon No. 3:

It might be to Joe.

Anonymous said...

HIP HIP HOORAY!!!

Anonymous said...

Agreed, Joe!
Muller carved those masterpieces.

Fiberglass replicas should be substituted and the originals safely preserved not to be ridden on.

I knew the guy who restored those animals and that was his opinion too.

Anonymous said...

Gee....LOL!....
they didn't let that Kew-Forest preservation group cut the ribbon.

Joe said...

Annon:
From what I remember Muller only built 2 of these (the original burned in a fire in the 1960s. My grandfather was on of the first firemen on the scene. Everything was destroyed.
The current carousel also has its original Wurlitzer 146B carousel band organ, Plays paper rolls that do 10 songs on each roll.
Only 40 of these were built, around 5 survive today.
Most all these organs that use common Wurlitzer rolls can be converted to play any song via a laptop and MIDI adapter that lays across the roll reader.
This makes them very valuable again VS 10 years ago.
Last I looked at that organ the bellows were dried up (shot) and some parts, end escutcheon (wing baffles) for the snare drum were missing.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6MJfMDpBt8

This is all gonna get destroyed. Unlike 1965 the kids of these new so called "immigrants" in Woodhaven, Ridgewood Glendale are feral with no understanding of value, temperament or appreciation.
They are gonna destroy, Muller must be turning in his grave.

Jerry Rotondi said...

A company called "Fabricon" (Queens based) lovingly restored those horses and animals

I met' the late, Marvin Sylvor--
who was (I believe) the owner (or co-owner) of that company many years ago--
when I was a trustee at the Queens Historical Society.

I recall talking with him
about that fabulous carousel.

He noted that during the restoration process--after the thick layers of paint were removed--
you could really get to see the woodcarver's masterful work in even greater detail.

He further mentioned that a good idea might be to create replicas that could take more abuse---then mount the originals around the carousel house.

It was an interesting thought.

In any case,
these are priceless works of
art that need continued protection.

Joe said...

The have machines that can make instant replicas cheaply now.

They scan whatever has to be duplicated with a LASER. The 3D scan is then sent to a robotic router arm.
I seen a huge highly detailed 8 foot ICE sculpture made in under 10 minutes this way

Jerry Rotondi said...

I remember Mayor Ed Koch
riding one of the horses on opening day--soon after after Fabricon had restored the carousel.

Somewhere in my junk pile,
I have a photo of him.

"Hi ho Silver".
I was on the horse right next to his.