Forest Park Carousel

New York

The carousel in Forest Park is older than the one it replaced.

historicalroadsideculture

On the tenth of December, nineteen sixty-six, the carousel at Forest Park in Queens burned down. Investigators called the fire suspicious in origin. That ride had been built around nineteen sixteen. Neighbors from Richmond Hill, Kew Gardens, Woodhaven and Glendale started asking the city for a new one within weeks. The city collected a fifty thousand dollar insurance payout and planned to start construction in early nineteen sixty-eight. Then almost nothing happened for two years. The parks commissioner announced substantial progress in nineteen seventy. Bids came in and sat untouched for over a year. At one point officials tried to buy a carousel off the defunct Palisades Amusement Park. What finally arrived came from Dracut, Massachusetts, from a trolley park that had mostly burned in nineteen fifty. It was built around nineteen oh three. The replacement was older than the ride it replaced by more than a decade.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
The current Forest Park Carousel is older than the structure that it replaced, which was built c. 1916 and burned down under suspicious circumstances in December 1966.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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