| Entertainment/Life |

Audubon Zoo’s Hurricane Ida-damaged carousel was recently removed for repairs, but New Orleans has another option for those determined to giddy. The carousel of choice for most locals has been spinning at the city’s other major park for decades.

That’s City Park’s Pegasus, a retro kinetic art piece housed in a 10-sided Victorian pavilion that’s as distinctive as the 56-seat carousel itself.

But its history is not as clear-cut as some might think. In fact, neither the carousel nor the pavilion is original to their current location at the center of City Park’s Carousel Garden. What’s more, the carousel there today is not the original city park carousel.

This whole dizzying story began on October 17, 1905, when a classified ad in The Daily Picayune called for sealed proposals to operate a carousel in a city park.

older options

This isn’t the first carousel the city has seen. As early as 1848, Picayune described similar rides that operated “for many years” along the river in the French Quarter.

Another operated for a while at the city’s Spanish Fort Recreation Area. The steam-powered version is said to have delighted visitors to the 1884 World Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, held in what is today Audubon Park.

There are others. These include City Park’s earlier carousel, operated by Jacob Stock, whose Stock Scenic Park play area is located just outside the park, at City Park Avenue and Alexander Street.

For the right to operate the carousel in the park, Stoke paid the city park board $350 a year. Then, in April 1903, he asked for a five-year extension of the contract at the same rate. To seal the deal, he agreed to “construct a beautiful building that will serve as an ornament for the park,” The Daily Picayune reported.

At the end of the contract, ownership of the building will revert to the park.

Skeptical, commissioners considered the idea of ​​running a carousel franchise themselves. Instead, they ended up awarding it to Bartholomew Murphy, who, along with brother Timothy Murphy — who at the time ran the Audubon Park Carousel — were both Coney Island A famous student of the Horse Eagle School.

Bartholomew Murphy is credited with building the city park’s 10-sided carousel, with its distinctive two-story roof topped by a dome and stained-glass windows on the upper level.

However, he didn’t build it on the current site. Instead, he built it on the site of the Stock Carousel, near the MacDonald Oaks on the city’s Park Avenue.

back and forth

This is where the dizzying merry-go-round carousel begins.

Around the time he lost his City Park contract, Stoke — who continues to run his eponymous amusement park outside the City Park gates — posted a classified ad attempting to unload his Pegasus, “at the expense of Perfect condition.” Presumably, those were horses that had previously flown through the city park.

According to a Times-Picayune report in 1985, Murphy moved the carousel his brother had previously operated in Audubon Park to a city park to fill the spot vacated by Stoke. He would continue to operate there until 1928.

Writing for the Hearst Television website, New Orleans writer Matt Haines said VeryLocal.com — A company called Crescent Amusement took over the contract for the city park and relocated the building and carousel to its current location. When Crescent closed during the Great Depression, it sold the carousel to Jacob Stock’s family.

Various explanations exist as to what happened to the original Murphy’s Carousel from there, but Pontchartrain Beach owner Harry Bart put it bluntly in a 1973 interview with longtime Times-Picayune entertainment reporter David Cuthbert (Presumably), he said in interviews that his Pontchartrain Beach horse—made by renowned carousel carver MC Illions—was actually purchased from the Stock family.

So the horse that New Orleanians rode on the beach for decades is likely to be the same horse they rode in city parks in the first three decades of the 20th century.

the circle got bigger

However, the story does not end there.

In 1948, Bart was awarded a recreation contract for the city park. In need of a carousel, he opened up an unused Nunnally-Murphy number that he had previously purchased from another amusement park in the old Spanish fort, and installed them in the city park.

They are the horses that flew there today.

“And you probably won’t be able to find much information about them because (Nunnally-Murphy) is an entertainment operator in its own right,” Batt said. “They carved the machines for their own use, running some of them on the East Coast. I don’t think they ever carved the machines to sell. With these parks and the machines closed, the rides were disposed of, sold. ”

We do know this about the city park horses: they are all beautiful, 53 of them, and giraffes, lions and camels gallop alongside them.

Experts say the ponytail is made from real horse hair and is emblazoned with the trademarks of Coney Island carousel masters Charles Looff and Charles Carmel.

In 1986, Bart sold them to City Park for the low price of $300,000. They’ve had several restorations since then, including a $500,000 overhaul after Katrina, and they get regular new coats of paint to keep them looking their best.

Today, the City Park Carousel is said to be one of only 100 antique carousels in the United States and the only one in Louisiana.

It and the 117-year-old gazebo were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

source: The Times – Playboy Archives; National Register of Historic Places; “Historic City Parks” by Friends of City Parks; new orleans city parks.org; VeryLocal.com.

Know a New Orleans building worthy of this column, or just curious about one?Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.