37 years ago this month, Jane’s Carousel began its Brooklyn journey

By Vince Guerrieri

As a worker on Jane’s Carousel in Brooklyn, Kyle Goings sees how seamlessly the carousel has integrated itself into its surrounding neighborhood, and how it has in many ways become a symbol of something bigger.

“It’s really become a quintessential part of New York,” he says of the carousel, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary of opening its current location, inside a jewel box designed by French architect Jean Nouvel in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

But the story of Jane’s Carousel goes back so much farther than the past decade—and well beyond the borders of Brooklyn. It’s a story that stretches across a century and three states. It has survived a depression, a fire and auction-by-piecemeal before being acquired by Jane and David Walentas in 1984. Following a lengthy and painstaking restoration, it finally opened at Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2011—and a year later, was nearly submerged by Superstorm Sandy.

“The carousel seems to just persist, and it’s an amazing thing,” says Goings. “It’s survived a lot of chaos.”

Goings should know. He came to New York from Central Ohio, not far from the carousel’s original home in Youngstown, to attend Tisch Film School at New York University. He brought his filmmaking skill and his experience around the carousel together for a documentary—one he feels uniquely suited to make. The film is tentatively scheduled for release next year, the centennial of the carousel’s manufacture by the legendary Philadelphia Toboggan Company, before it landed in Youngstown, Ohio.

‘Jane’s Carousel’ by wallyg is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

‘We took it for granted’
Idora Park opened at the end of a trolley line in 1899, and its fortunes rose and fell with its hometown over the next century. (Youngstown itself, incidentally, was named for a New York native, John Young, who surveyed the area in 1796 and ended up staying.) As the city’s population soared with thousands of immigrants arriving to work in the mills and factories along the Mahoning River, Idora Park became known as “Youngstown’s Million-Dollar Playground.” It survived the trolley company that built it—and many other trolley parks, which either succumbed to the Great Depression or met their demise in the 1950s adn 1960s.

Through it all, Idora Park remained a kind of a refuge. And sitting at its center was that wooden merry-go-round—with 30 jumping horses, 18 fixed steeds and two chariots.

“To be quite honest, we took it for granted,” says Bill Lawson, who frequented the park in the 1970s as a junior high and high school student, and is now the director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society.

Arguably, the locals also took the mills for granted. They were huge open hearths, around for most of the twentieth century. How could they go anywhere? But one by one, the mills started closing, plunging the Mahoning Valley into economic straits from which it never entirely recovered.

And so, by April 26, 1984, a city that had had already seen so much loss endured one more: Just as the park was getting ready for the season, a fire ripped through its heart, destroying the Wild Cat roller coaster (at one point regarded as one of the nation’s best), the Lost River ride, 11 concession stands, and the park office. The firefighters who battled the blaze made sure to hose down the carousel so it wouldn’t light.

By October, Idora Park was up for sale. The land would be bought by a local church, with grandiose but unrealized plans for a “City of God.” One by one, items were auctioned off. Kitchen equipment from the concession stands found new uses. Some rides were bought by other amusement parks. And collectors began bidding on individual horses from the historic carousel, with some receiving bids from $3,200 to $35,000.

Ultimately the merry-go-round was kept intact, and put on the block for $385,000. There was a bidder, and the crowd cheered. “We’ve saved another carousel,” announced auctioneer David Norton.

The bidders were David and Jane Walentas, a couple from Brooklyn. David, a real estate developer, was building out Dumbo (an ironic bohemian acronym for “Down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass,” originally meant to discourage developers like Walentas). His wife Jane had until recently been an executive with Estée Lauder. And so began a 37-year journey for the carousel—and its brilliant second act.

‘Jane’s Carousel’ by wallyg is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

‘She really cared about it’
The restoration took more than two decades. Previously, at Idora Park, form followed function: Chips would be patched, new paint would be put on, the motor would be greased and it would be ready to go. Jane Walentas spearheaded a project that took the carousel back to its origins. They stripped off decades of paint—using X-Acto knives when they had to—and painstakingly repainted it, using auto detailers for some of the pinstriping.

“It’s beautiful,” says Jim Amey, who worked at the park in the 1970s. “It’s so well done and well maintained. She really cared about it.”

Amey is a devoted collector of park memorabilia, and in 2013, constructed a building on his property outside of Youngstown just to accommodate his collection, which includes everything from games in the arcade to cars from some of the rides. The Idora Park Experience opens only a couple times a year—and draws big crowds every time it does, bringing in people who remembered going there, and even people who don’t, but remain fascinated by it.

Ohioans can come and look at Amey’s collection, which is a static shrine to a bygone park. But they can actually experience a piece of it here in Brooklyn, and ride the carousel just as they would in 1922. Jane Walentas, who died in 2020, kept a special sign-in book for the Mahoning Valley residents who came to admire and ride the the merry-go-round.

“I’d like the carousel to be here,” Amey says, “but it’s open, it’s in one piece, and it’s well-loved. It’s in the right place.”

‘Jane’s Carousel in DUMBO’ by Jorge Quinteros is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.