Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. We thought that for today's Saturday Classic we
Speaker 1: would choose a topic that's on the lighter side, and
Speaker 1: this one mostly is a couple of moments, not as like,
Speaker 1: but mostly on the lighter side. It is our history
Speaker 1: of Carousels, which originally came out March. And we usually
Speaker 1: snip out the listener mail segment of our Saturday Classics
Speaker 1: since they're usually referencing some other long ago episode that
Speaker 1: people may not have heard recently and it could just
Speaker 1: be a little jarring. But in this case, the listener
Speaker 1: mail inspired the episode, so stay tuned for it at
Speaker 1: the end, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy B. Wilson,
Speaker 1: and today we're doing another listener request hooray, and it's
Speaker 1: a really delightful one. But I'm actually going to save
Speaker 1: the information about the listener email that requested it for
Speaker 1: the end of the episode. It'll be our listener mail
Speaker 1: segment because it adds a nice coda to the whole story.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Tracy, I am sure you remember writing a
Speaker 1: carousel or Merry go around as a child, maybe even
Speaker 1: as an adult. It is, or at least was a
Speaker 1: pretty common part of childhood, but carousels have kind of
Speaker 1: become a less and less of an of the moment
Speaker 1: kind of part of childhood, even though there are still
Speaker 1: a number around and people do still enjoy them, but
Speaker 1: they are in some ways part of history, and they
Speaker 1: have their own really interesting history there by no means gone,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about some of the modern
Speaker 1: developments in them at the end, but their prevalence in
Speaker 1: the entertainment landscape is not what it once was. They
Speaker 1: used to be much more of like an event item
Speaker 1: and centerpiece to amusement parks, and so we're actually going
Speaker 1: to talk about a few things in this episode. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk first about general carousel history, and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk briefly about a couple of key innovators
Speaker 1: in carousels, and then at the very end there's kind
Speaker 1: of a neat story that we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: about one particular carousel that has its own history that's
Speaker 1: related to the civil rights movement. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot, but we're doing, you know, they're kind of
Speaker 1: the brief versions of any of those stories. So this
Speaker 1: first chuncolate that we're talking about is consistently told anytime
Speaker 1: you look at a history of carousels, But in terms
Speaker 1: of hard substantiation, it's difficult to come by. It's almost
Speaker 1: one of those things that it could be all completely true,
Speaker 1: but it could also be one of those things that's
Speaker 1: been repeated so much that people accepted as history. Uh.
Speaker 1: But like I said, we don't have like so much
Speaker 1: hard proof on this one. So yes, and it's so
Speaker 1: delightful that it would be such a shame not to
Speaker 1: talk about it. So the possible, the possibly apocryphal story
Speaker 1: of carousels actually starts back in the twelfth century with
Speaker 1: a game played by Turkish and Arabian horsemen. And to
Speaker 1: play this game, the riders would toss a clay ball
Speaker 1: containing perfume back and forth while they were on horseback,
Speaker 1: and if a player didn't successfully catch the ball, it
Speaker 1: would break and it would cover him in the scent
Speaker 1: of failure. Yeah, he would smell good, presumably it was
Speaker 1: a perfume, but everyone would know that he had lost.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of an awkward consolation prize to
Speaker 1: smell lovely. But uh, that being kind of the identifier
Speaker 1: that you were not as skilled as your challengers. Italian
Speaker 1: and Spanish crusaders are said to have witnessed this game
Speaker 1: taking place, and that they eventually brought it back to
Speaker 1: Europe and there it took on the name Catrocella or
Speaker 1: Gero slo uh, depending on which language you're speaking, and
Speaker 1: that translated at that time to little War. Later on,
Speaker 1: the French adopted this game and they expanded their play
Speaker 1: to include multiple equestrian challenges. These developed into competitions called carousels,
Speaker 1: and participants needed to practice for their matches, so a
Speaker 1: training mechanism was developed that had wooden horses mounted on
Speaker 1: arms that were suspended from big poles or chains, and
Speaker 1: they rotated around a central central point. There wasn't really
Speaker 1: a floor on these carousels. Yeah, it's really um. You know,
Speaker 1: they're all kind of dangling from above, So not quite
Speaker 1: the way you would think of a Carouselar and Merry
Speaker 1: go around today, but you know, again dangling. There are
Speaker 1: other um rides that have have become popular that are
Speaker 1: similar where you spin ours, but I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: it's like the swings at the carnival, where you sit
Speaker 1: in the swing and it turns and you swing out. Yes,
Speaker 1: but for a long time, that's how carousels worked, so uh.
Speaker 1: Some versions of these training carousels were pulled by horses
Speaker 1: or mules, others were powered by humans. There would often
Speaker 1: be a hand crank or a pull rope that created
Speaker 1: the movement, and the horsemen would participate in various games
Speaker 1: while they were riding these training steeds. And I'm being
Speaker 1: very generous because apparently they were very rudimentary quote horses. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the games that they would play included
Speaker 1: trying to spear a ring with a jousting lance. So
Speaker 1: if you have ever been on a carousel with a
Speaker 1: ring for riders to grab as they pass under or
Speaker 1: buy it, uh, this is a callback allegedly to this game,
Speaker 1: although those have become less and less popular. This is
Speaker 1: also where that expression grabbed the brass ring comes from,
Speaker 1: as the brass ring to be the most prized of
Speaker 1: the rings on a carousel game like this. More often
Speaker 1: you would see iron rings and then there would be
Speaker 1: an occasional brass ring. So that association of grabbing the
Speaker 1: brass ring with you know, going after the big prize
Speaker 1: or going after something is comes all from this. So
Speaker 1: watching sports has been a pastime for as long as
Speaker 1: there have been sports, and so spectators watched the horsemen practice,
Speaker 1: and they're said to have grown interested in trying it
Speaker 1: out for themselves. So where there's the demand, there are
Speaker 1: usually people who are ready to fill it for a price.
Speaker 1: And by the late seventeen hundreds carousels were being made
Speaker 1: not for sports training but for entertainment, and for the
Speaker 1: next hundred years or so, these simple man and mule
Speaker 1: power divertisements because they worked pretty much exactly the same
Speaker 1: way as the training ones, they were just gussied up
Speaker 1: in a more fun way. Uh, we're appearing at European
Speaker 1: festivals and fairs pretty consistently. But because they were powered
Speaker 1: either by man or animal, they had to stay pretty
Speaker 1: much on the small side. Victorian circus entrepreneur Lord George
Speaker 1: Sanger described the early hand cranked carousels his father once
Speaker 1: made in his book Seventy Years a Showman. These rudimentary,
Speaker 1: early merrygarounds had horses that weren't realistic, but they were colorful.
Speaker 1: The horses manes and tails are made using rabbit fur,
Speaker 1: and because these still required a living creature, to power them.
Speaker 1: Kids were generally employed to push carousels like singers to
Speaker 1: get these mechanisms to spin. So these were usually the
Speaker 1: kids that could not afford to pay for a ride themselves,
Speaker 1: so they would push for the day and then at
Speaker 1: the end of the day they would be paid with
Speaker 1: free rides. There are some sort of dicey tails, mostly apocryphal,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure some of this happened of sort of
Speaker 1: near slave labor at some fairs where kids weren't really
Speaker 1: treated all that well. Uh, But for the most part
Speaker 1: it seems to have been like a pay for play situation.
Speaker 1: You come and do this work, and then at the
Speaker 1: end of the day you get rewarded with a ride
Speaker 1: on the carousel. And some mechanisms did not involve children,
Speaker 1: and they were turned by horses or, more often at fairs, ponies.
Speaker 1: The velocipede was an interesting variation on this idea. Bicycles
Speaker 1: mounted around the outside edge of the carousel would generate
Speaker 1: the circular motion. Those things look so fun to me now.
Speaker 1: I'm reminded for a moment of a ride at the
Speaker 1: Georgia Renaissance Festival where you sit in it and it's
Speaker 1: mounted from a pole. In the center and the people
Speaker 1: push it to turn it all the way up the
Speaker 1: pole and it rises up as the thing that's suspending
Speaker 1: it gets after on the pole and then they let
Speaker 1: go and you spin on the way down. Oh I
Speaker 1: don't I'm having trouble recalling that one. But I maybe
Speaker 1: never paid attention to the rides at the Renaisance Festival.
Speaker 1: I was probably too busy eating. Uh. In eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: there was a major leap forward when steam entered the
Speaker 1: picture as a way to power carousels without direct man
Speaker 1: or animal power. On New Year's Day, Thomas Bradshaw debuted
Speaker 1: his steam driven carousel in Bolton, England, and it contained
Speaker 1: a London built boiler unit, an engine, and horses that
Speaker 1: have been made by Bradshaw himself, and he patented his
Speaker 1: carousel design in eighteen sixty three. A similar carousel, which
Speaker 1: may actually have been the same one from the eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty one Bolton debut, was operating at a fair in
Speaker 1: Halifax in eighteen sixty three, and while carousel technology was
Speaker 1: moving forward, it wasn't really met with universal enthusiasm at
Speaker 1: the outset. Yeah. A journalist who was describing this installation
Speaker 1: in Halifax described the mechanism as mammoth and overpowered, and
Speaker 1: he wondered how riders were not shot off their mounts
Speaker 1: like cannon balls. Uh. Local residents also fretted over the
Speaker 1: possibility that the whole thing would explode explode from the
Speaker 1: pressure of the boiler unit, and there were some claims
Speaker 1: and accusations made that they were endangering children by having
Speaker 1: this ride available. However, there were not any explosions, and
Speaker 1: people did continue to be interested in carousels, and the
Speaker 1: next couple of years several more of them appeared around Britain.
Speaker 1: There's even a newspaper report of a stay a steam
Speaker 1: driven velocipede at King's lynmart in eighteen sixty six, although
Speaker 1: the records of the mechanism are incomplete, and I'm a
Speaker 1: little like, how do you combine the bicycles and the steam? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it sounded so fascinating to me. Um.
Speaker 1: And then once carousels crossed the Atlantic to the US,
Speaker 1: they really underwent a huge transformation and they became bigger
Speaker 1: and flashier and more color full, and the horses became
Speaker 1: far more intricate and detailed. Uh. There it was a
Speaker 1: little bit of a shift to sort of the art
Speaker 1: of it in many ways. Because the late eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: saw major advancements and technology and industry, it wasn't long
Speaker 1: before the carousel saw them too. The so called Golden
Speaker 1: Age of carousel's started around eighteen eighty and this was
Speaker 1: when merry grounds integrated flooring platforms and up and down
Speaker 1: movement of the animals as they circled the central mechanism.
Speaker 1: Other variations were tried, including coiled springs to add bounce,
Speaker 1: and even animals mounted on undulating tracks to create an
Speaker 1: up and down movement. The carousel at the Little Rock,
Speaker 1: Arkansas Zoo, which is called Over the Jumps, still uses
Speaker 1: an undulating track and it's been fully refurbished. If you
Speaker 1: ever want to ride one, yeah, so that one instead
Speaker 1: of like the pole sort of moving up and down,
Speaker 1: it just follows this nice wave pattern track, so you
Speaker 1: just go up and down. It's a little more of
Speaker 1: a rolling hill effect. It's quite gentle, and as well
Speaker 1: as all of the technical advancements, there were some pretty
Speaker 1: amazing artistic strides going on. So in the US, carousels
Speaker 1: UH did not restrict themselves to featuring horses alone, so
Speaker 1: soon unicorns lions, guerrillas, dolphins, giraffes, and a host of
Speaker 1: other animals made appearances as mounts on carousels. For five decades,
Speaker 1: carousels stood as the main attraction affairs and amusement parks
Speaker 1: throughout the United States, and people marveled at their beauty
Speaker 1: and their craftsmanship. Carousel rides were a much consumed entertainment
Speaker 1: diversion for adults as well as kids, and several different
Speaker 1: styles developed in the carousel world in the US. UH.
Speaker 1: The Coney Island style it's sometimes called, is sort of
Speaker 1: a show ear style. The horses are painted in really
Speaker 1: bright colors, and they often have jewels attached and metallic
Speaker 1: leaf and the rest of the unit, like the the
Speaker 1: central part in the ceilings often feature multitudes of light
Speaker 1: catching mirror. And then the Philadelphia style UH is a
Speaker 1: little bit more realistic in the way its animals are
Speaker 1: painted and created and carved, and it's associated usually with
Speaker 1: really exquisite craftsmanship. The county fair style is populated with
Speaker 1: much simpler designs. UH. These merrygo rounds are usually intended
Speaker 1: to move from place to place like county fairs do,
Speaker 1: so they are by necessity a lot less complex and
Speaker 1: they don't have as much decoration. And then just as
Speaker 1: the culture of carousels had really embedded itself in the
Speaker 1: Americana landscape, the Great Depression happened. Like a lot of industries,
Speaker 1: carousel production was hit really hard, and a lot of
Speaker 1: companies significantly reduced their output or closed up shop altogether.
Speaker 1: The Golden Age of carousels had ended. And it's estimated
Speaker 1: that more than four thousand carousels were made in the
Speaker 1: United States during the Golden Age. Fewer than a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of these are still intact. Uh And we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some restoration efforts later on.
Speaker 1: But next we're going to talk about a couple of
Speaker 1: important men in carousel history. There's certainly more than two,
Speaker 1: but in the interests of time, we had to kind
Speaker 1: of pick two that are important. But before we talk
Speaker 1: about them, let's pause for a quick sponsor break. One
Speaker 1: of the big names in carousel's is Gustave Denzel, and
Speaker 1: he was originally from Germany and he immigrated to the
Speaker 1: US in the mid eighteen hundreds, and as a boy,
Speaker 1: Denzel had traveled throughout Germany with his family in the summers,
Speaker 1: helping them run their carousel ride. In the eighteen sixties,
Speaker 1: Gustave's father shipped the young man, his brothers, and a
Speaker 1: carousel to America on a steamer. When they got there,
Speaker 1: they brought Philadelphia one of the first carousels in the
Speaker 1: United States and they set up shop there. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's uh, you know, happening at the same time that
Speaker 1: things like the steam power are coming into being. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit after that, uh uh you know. So
Speaker 1: while England is having this little boom of of carousels,
Speaker 1: it is shipping across the Atlantic at the same time,
Speaker 1: and there it was certainly happening in other parts of
Speaker 1: Europe as well. The Denzel family built this reputation of
Speaker 1: incredible craftsmanship and they set the tone of realism that
Speaker 1: came to be associated with the Philadelphia style of carousels.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting is that their style stayed really
Speaker 1: consistent throughout the years, even with changes in leadership to
Speaker 1: the company. Gustave died in nineteen o nine, at which
Speaker 1: point his son's William and Edward, took over the family business.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty, Edward moved to California to run a
Speaker 1: West Coast carousel business and Williams stayed in Philadelphia, and
Speaker 1: after almost twenty years helming the Denzel Carousel Company, William
Speaker 1: died in seven and the company folded soon thereafter, and
Speaker 1: Edward decided to remain in California. He eventually became mayor
Speaker 1: of Beverly Hills. Eventually, Edward's son, who was also named William,
Speaker 1: restarted the family business, and his son, William Denzel the
Speaker 1: third still continues this five generation tradition of elegance, both
Speaker 1: crafting new pieces and restoring older hair cells. Yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the things that you'll find if you start looking
Speaker 1: around online is that a lot of these companies have
Speaker 1: had sort of a resurgence, and often it's it's family
Speaker 1: members that have reopened them or have just kind of
Speaker 1: bolstered them when they were struggling and are now running
Speaker 1: them again, which is kind of a lovely, sort of
Speaker 1: heartwarming part of it. Um. The other man that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today is Charles I. D. Loof, and,
Speaker 1: like Denzel, Luf was originally from Europe. He was born
Speaker 1: in Denmark in eighteen fifty two, and he moved to
Speaker 1: the US in eighteen seventy at the age of eighteen
Speaker 1: and at first, he started as a furniture carver. His
Speaker 1: carousel carving actually started as a hobby. It was something
Speaker 1: he did with his furniture making skills in his off hours,
Speaker 1: but it soon sort of started to become a passion,
Speaker 1: and just five years after arriving in New York, he
Speaker 1: opened his first Coney Island carousel for business. Luke saw
Speaker 1: the potential of an amusement destination and he was instrumental
Speaker 1: in developing Coney Island as a permanent attraction. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: also is often credited with developing or being a major
Speaker 1: contributor to the Coney Island style of carousel horses. And
Speaker 1: five years after he opened his carousel and Coney Island,
Speaker 1: he opened a carousel factory in Brooklyn and he stayed
Speaker 1: in that location from eighteen eighty until sometime in late
Speaker 1: nineteen o four or early nineteen o five, and at
Speaker 1: that point he moved the business to Riverside, Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ten, he moved again, but this time much further.
Speaker 1: He went across the country to California, and there he
Speaker 1: was instrumental in the development of Venice Beach and the
Speaker 1: Santa Monica Piers amusement attractions. Unfortunately, Luf's work building up
Speaker 1: the role of amusement parks in America turned out to
Speaker 1: be part of the carousel's downfall. Working with his son
Speaker 1: Arthur Charles Luf and the Wholesome Entertainment News he helped
Speaker 1: build created this perfect platform for the rise in popularity
Speaker 1: of a different attraction, the roller coaster. And as roller
Speaker 1: coasters became more and more common, they already existed before this,
Speaker 1: but they really started to get a groundhold in terms
Speaker 1: of popularity in the amusement industry, in large part due
Speaker 1: to Luf creating these sort of parks where people would
Speaker 1: go uh. They started drawing more and more crowds and
Speaker 1: interesting carousels started to wane because this was a much
Speaker 1: more exciting and thrilling ride uh. And to try to
Speaker 1: regain some market share, the marketing for carousels sort of
Speaker 1: shifted to be like more about kids and children's entertainment, Whereas,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned prior to that, they were touted as
Speaker 1: diversions for children and adults equally. But between the newer
Speaker 1: and more thrilling options and the onset of the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: there just wasn't anyway for merry grounds to keep their
Speaker 1: previous status, and when Luke died in all management of
Speaker 1: their California Here ventures went to his son, and Arthur
Speaker 1: eventually sold off the portion of the Peer that the
Speaker 1: family owned, although he continued to operate attractions there for
Speaker 1: several years. But eventually the Loof's contracts they're all expired
Speaker 1: and their mini empire was dismantled. Uh The carousel, which
Speaker 1: had originally been part of Loose Santa Monica amusement center
Speaker 1: called the Hippodrome, was sold off in parts to collectors.
Speaker 1: The Hippodrome incidentally, was actually saved from demolition in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies when Robert Redford and Paul Newman, as well
Speaker 1: as other local activists saved it, and it still stands today.
Speaker 1: It's been renovated a few times and it has a
Speaker 1: different carousel in it. So before we delve into one
Speaker 1: carousel's significance in civil rights history, let's have a quick
Speaker 1: word from a sponsor that sounds super duper. So there's
Speaker 1: one particular carousel that's connected to the history of the
Speaker 1: US civil rights movement. Yeah, it's not like it had
Speaker 1: a huge, big impact, but it's kind of just a
Speaker 1: really beautiful story um and it's a carousel that still
Speaker 1: exists today. So as the March on Washington was taking
Speaker 1: place in August nineteen sixty three, a smaller but still
Speaker 1: important event was taking place forty miles north of the city,
Speaker 1: and on that day, a white, solely amusement park called
Speaker 1: gwyn Oak allowed black children in for the first time.
Speaker 1: Sharon Langley, he was only eleven months old at the
Speaker 1: time and was held in place on the saddle by
Speaker 1: her father, was the first African American child to ride
Speaker 1: the carousel at the park, along with white children. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: just a few years after the amusement park desegregated, it
Speaker 1: actually closed for good, and after a few more years,
Speaker 1: the carousel that had stood at Gwynn Park was purchased
Speaker 1: by the Smithsonian that was in and at that point
Speaker 1: it was moved to the National Mall. Seven years after
Speaker 1: it's moved to the mall, standing Donna Hunter purchased the
Speaker 1: carousel uh and they have since barrated it there on
Speaker 1: the mall. But during all that time, no one knew
Speaker 1: of this kind of interesting little piece of history attached
Speaker 1: to it. Amy Nathan and author researching civil rights history,
Speaker 1: finally put all the pieces together in two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: and notified the hunters of their merriagor rounds historical significance.
Speaker 1: It became part of Nathan's book Round and Round Together,
Speaker 1: Taking Your Ride into Civil Rights History, and the Nathan's
Speaker 1: have repainted the horse that Langley rode that day to
Speaker 1: commemorate the Civil rights movement. The National Park Service has
Speaker 1: also included the carousel in educational programming about civil rights. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just love that there's this wonderful piece of like
Speaker 1: children's history that's also a part of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: There's a really sweet picture of Langley writing it with
Speaker 1: her dad holding her when she's eleven months old, and
Speaker 1: then as an adult, once they figured out this little
Speaker 1: piece of history, she went back and wrote it again
Speaker 1: and it's just so heartwarming. Uh So, while carousels did
Speaker 1: not vanish completely with a great depression, they certainly experience
Speaker 1: is to drop in terms of their presence and their popularity.
Speaker 1: And once the economy picked back up, so did production
Speaker 1: to some degree. But the hand carved carousel horses that
Speaker 1: had been sort of this amazing art that was developing
Speaker 1: were replaced by fiberglass and aluminum versions. No more steam
Speaker 1: powered carousels were made, they had shifted over to electric. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, the thing that we were
Speaker 1: riding into County Fair was a fiber last carousel run
Speaker 1: on electricity, and I was like, why are you making meatus?
Speaker 1: But now as an adult, when I'm somewhere and I
Speaker 1: see some like beautifully restored, handmade wooden carousel, I think
Speaker 1: it's very lovely. Yeah, there are still some of those
Speaker 1: hand carved beauties remaining, and the restoration projects have been
Speaker 1: undertaken to keep a lot of them around. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: of them are um mounted by you know, just private
Speaker 1: people that sometimes start collecting carousel horses and then decided
Speaker 1: they want to put carousels by together others who are
Speaker 1: handled by companies. But in the last four decades, interesting
Speaker 1: carousels and carousel horses as collectors items has really swelled,
Speaker 1: Like in the nineteen seventies, sort of this kickoff just
Speaker 1: happened where people started to become really into them again.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, part of the problem with keeping carousels going
Speaker 1: is that in many cases it is more profitable to
Speaker 1: sell off the amazing horses than it is to try
Speaker 1: to keep a carousel running, they have to run at
Speaker 1: a profit. There are also some interesting innovations and modern carousels.
Speaker 1: Washington's National Zoo now has one that runs on solar power,
Speaker 1: and all of the animals that are represented there are
Speaker 1: endangered species, so it's in line with the Zoo's theme
Speaker 1: of conservation. Uh So, if you love carousels, this is
Speaker 1: our p s A. And you want to see them
Speaker 1: stick around again. They have to operate in a way
Speaker 1: that makes money and makes sense for them to keep going.
Speaker 1: So go ride one. Seriously, if you have a local carousel,
Speaker 1: go buy a ticket to ride, help keep it going,
Speaker 1: visit off, and bring your friends. That's what's going to
Speaker 1: keep this piece of history alive. And so now we're
Speaker 1: gonna tie some things that we've talked about together with
Speaker 1: the listener mail that Holly reference at the top of
Speaker 1: the episode. Uh she or we both actually got this
Speaker 1: email last year. So when we tell you that sometimes
Speaker 1: it takes a while, uh I would say almost always
Speaker 1: said almost always takes a while. Uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I wanna. I know we always say it, but I
Speaker 1: do want to reassure people that even if we haven't
Speaker 1: gotten to your request yet, we may or may not,
Speaker 1: but we're trying to. So we're working through it. And
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that I love the
Speaker 1: second we got it, and then it just kind of
Speaker 1: got back Bernard by other things for a while. So
Speaker 1: and we also do read every single email that we get,
Speaker 1: although we are not nearly as good about answering no. Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to keep up with as well as you know. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the podcast is not our only job here, so there's
Speaker 1: we're juggling some stuff. So I hope no one feels
Speaker 1: slighted if they don't get a sill reply. We try
Speaker 1: too as many as we can. But anyway, that's the story.
Speaker 1: So this listener mail is from our listener Ashley, and
Speaker 1: she says, hello, ladies. I love your podcast and I
Speaker 1: laugh at your love affairs with delicious food in historical clothing,
Speaker 1: both things I wish I knew more about. I have
Speaker 1: a happy topic for you since you asked for them.
Speaker 1: So recently my job I worked for the world's largest
Speaker 1: manufacturer of wooden carousels, the Carousel Works, incorporated in Mansfield, Ohio.
Speaker 1: This is site of the historic Ohio State Reformatory where
Speaker 1: they filled in the Shawshank Redemption. Our carousels are handbuilt,
Speaker 1: hand carved, and hand painted. We are one of the
Speaker 1: few companies in the world that still does this. And
Speaker 1: in addition to having a carousel in nearly every state
Speaker 1: in the Union, we have a carousel in Canada to
Speaker 1: in South Korea, and the only two carousels at sea
Speaker 1: on cruise ships with Royal Caribbeans Oasis of the Seas
Speaker 1: and Allure of the Seas. We're putting up our fifty
Speaker 1: five new carousel later in our third in South Korea.
Speaker 1: Right now, we are restoring the historic Euclid Beach Park
Speaker 1: Rand carousel that was once located in Cleveland, Ohio, just
Speaker 1: one in a long line of restorations we've taken part in.
Speaker 1: It's also known as PTC Number nineteen. The Philadelphia Toboggan
Speaker 1: Company was one of the premier carousel makers in the States,
Speaker 1: and their name is tossed around with historic carvers such
Speaker 1: as Eleon, Herschel, Spielman, dentzel, Loof, and Parker. Many of
Speaker 1: the wood carvers were immigrants who came from Europe and
Speaker 1: found work in the States. Many of these carousels were
Speaker 1: richly decorated and painted. However, after the Great Depression, they
Speaker 1: almost all went away and were replaced with a luminium fiberglass.
Speaker 1: It was actually the Carousel Works that created the first
Speaker 1: new hand carved carousel in to have been built since
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, using an antique frame but all new figures,
Speaker 1: murals and gears. I grew up riding that carousel. This
Speaker 1: is a really cool part about her job. It's all cool,
Speaker 1: but she says, I myself am a painter at the
Speaker 1: Carousel Works, having painted figures and murals for almost three
Speaker 1: years now. You can actually see my paint jobs on
Speaker 1: a carousel near you at the Birmingham Sux. It's kind
Speaker 1: of near a day trip maybe. Um. We built that
Speaker 1: carousel in two thousand two and repainted the figures recently.
Speaker 1: In I painted the clouded leopard and the jaguar. That
Speaker 1: is the coolest thing actually, I actually cyberstocked her work
Speaker 1: and went looking for pictures of the clouded leopard and
Speaker 1: the jaguar at the Birmingham Zoo carousel and they're gorgeous.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful. I am so thankful for this listener
Speaker 1: mail and the inspiration of it, because it's one of
Speaker 1: those topics that it is really beautiful part of history,
Speaker 1: and I always like supporting artists, and carousels are in
Speaker 1: many cases amazing works of art. So I also kind
Speaker 1: of want to return to the days where we played
Speaker 1: a game of riding horses and throwing perfume at each other.
Speaker 1: I would play that. Well, we can mount that as
Speaker 1: our own game. Can have this sort of horrible office
Speaker 1: game where we all smell like perfume. My thing is that,
Speaker 1: you know, I would want it to be good perfume,
Speaker 1: but that gets really expensive. We can just delete an oil.
Speaker 1: That's what we'll do. They go. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out
Speaker 1: of the archive, if you heard an email address or
Speaker 1: a Facebook U r L or something similar over the
Speaker 1: course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our
Speaker 1: current email address is History Podcast at i heart radio
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Speaker 1: longer works, and you can find us all over social
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