The Merry-Go-Round Museum in Sandusky, Ohio celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary in July by celebrating the rich history of carousels dating from their beginning as training devices for knights perfecting their jousting techniques with moving targets during medieval times.
The merry-go-round became a fast-paced and romantic ride for carnival goers by the dawn of the Victorian era at the end of the 1800s before becoming a favorite children's ride with the arrival of the twentieth century.
The United States once had 6,000 wooden merry-go-rounds, but today the museum's classic carousel is one of less than 200 such rides still in operation in this country.
The idea for museum came after 1988 when US Postal Service issued four stamps celebrating the art of carving carousel animals.
The block of stamps included images of a carved deer created by Gustav Dentzel in 1895 and an armored horse created by carousel animal carver Daniel Muller in 1925, which graced the Kiddieland carousel at Ohio's Cedar Point.
Cedar Point held a first day of issue ceremony at the amusement park's campus in Sandusky, Ohio.
Sandusky citizens later borrowed the city's then-vacant vintage Post Office building to stage a display of the Muller horse, the Dentzel deer and a few other figures.
Organizers of the display expected a draw a few hundred visitors. Surprisingly, more than 2,000 visitors from around the country showed up to view the show.
The successful showing spurred the establishment of a non-profit corporation that purchased the old post office building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and established the Merry-Go-Round Museum.
The Museum officially opened on July 14, 1990.
The Museum still retains traces of its former identity as a Post Office, and many visitors, employees and paranormal investigators report seeing and hearing evidence of ghostly entities that hang around the museum, attracted by a connection with one of the carved carousel animals or, in at least one case, because they formerly worked at the building when it was a Post Office.
The museum purchased the framework of a 1939 Herschell Carousel on which to showcase some of the carved animals in its collection in 1991.
The carousel frame from the Allen Herschell company arrived without the original animals. Museum staff and volunteers cleaned, refurbished and repainted the scenery panels and rebuilt the platform before placing a menagerie of carved carousel animals from the museum's collection and loans from private owners atop the platform to create a unique merry-go-round as the museum's centerpiece.
You can also see a display of vintage Dentzel carving tools at the museum, and there are often master carvers on hand in the workshop on the ground floor to display and explain carving art and techniques.
Museum workshop artisans use historically accurate techniques to create new carousel animals or to help restore them with proceeds earned from such work used to reinvest in the museum and its collection.
Each year, carvers create a new carousel horse as an auction prize with the proceeds from the auction also going to support the museum. You can check out the progress of the 2015 raffle horse created by master carver Kate Adam at the museum's Web site.
Some of the museum's carousel animals became part of the annual holiday display at the White House in Washington, D.C. in December of 2014, where an estimated 65,000 visitors viewed them before the carved animals returned home to Sandusky.
Summer hours are 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon until 5 p.m. Sunday beginning on Memorial Day and running through Labor Day. Check the Web site for information about the museum's operating hours during the rest of the year.
You can also connect with the museum on Facebook.
Admission is $6 for adults, $5 for senior citizens, $4 for children 4-14 and free for children under age 4.
For me, the highlight of my visit to the museum was a ride aboard the carousel, included as part of the museum admission cost.
Want to see more Midwest merry-go-rounds? Check out Ohio's Carrousel Park in Mansfield (yes, that's the correct spelling in this case) and a Photo Friday feature about the Carrousel Park in Ohio, or Big -kid fun on the carousel at Grand Rapids Public Museum and a Photo Friday feature about that western Michigan carousel.
Learn more about the art of carousel animal carving by checking out Flying Horses: The Golden Age of American Carousel Art, 1870-1930 by Peter J. Malia or Carousel Animal Carving: Patterns and Techniques by Bud Ellis, Rhonda Hoeckley and Bonnie Greenwood.
Thanks to the Lake Erie Shores & Islands Visitors Bureau for sponsoring my visit to Sandusky, providing lodging, meals and admission to attractions for my review, with no further compensation. I was free to express my own opinions about the stay and experiences, and the opinions expressed here are mine.
© Dominique King 2015 All rights reserved
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