Touch of past returning to old Memorial Hall

In the Carousel Pavilion at Fairmount Park's Memorial Hall yesterday, a pair of pink pigs scampered after two horned goats, while a chestnut horse lay on its side, awaiting placement. After half a century on the road, and almost two years of restoration, they're back where they belong.

This week craftsmen from the Marion, Ohio, firm of Carousels & Carvings Inc., led by Todd Goings, began installing animals on a historic carousel in what soon will be the new home of the Please Touch Museum. So far, the carousel is an impressive work in progress: A few vaulted ceiling panels are already in place, covering the recently hung floor and first batch of 14 meticulously carved and painted animals, which Goings expects to finish putting in place today. By the time Please Touch opens in mid-October, 52 will be on board, along with two chariots, new paneling, and 1,296 miniature lightbulbs.

The carousel seems particularly appropriate in historic Memorial Hall, for it is more than just a children's ride arriving in Philadelphia - it's a piece of the city's past. Built by the Dentzel Carousel Company on Germantown Avenue in 1924, a few years before the company closed, it ran for decades at Woodside Park in West Philadelphia, not far from where it stands today. It was beloved by locals, many of whom still remember their favorite animals.

When Woodside Park closed in 1955, the carousel left the Philadelphia area for New York's Rockaway Beach until around 1959, when it was purchased by carousel enthusiast Frederick Fried. He featured it at the Music Circus in Lambertville, N.J., before selling it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1965.

The Smithsonian put it into storage in an old textile mill in Massachusetts, where it remained, dismantled and mostly forgotten, for the next 40 years.

And it might still be there, if not for Please Touch. With its focus on children, the museum had long desired a carousel, and when the decision was made to move from its current Center City location to vast Memorial Hall, the timing was right. The plan was to build one, until the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission - to which the Smithsonian had donated the carousel in 2002 - offered the Dentzel as a long-term loan. Museum officials accepted and in 2006 prepared to move the carousel out of storage and back into the public eye.

But what they found at the textile mill was "a graveyard of dead animals," recalls museum curator Stacy Swigart. "They were lying on their sides on the floor, and a lot of them were in really poor condition, because they had been sandblasted in the past and then repainted colors in like baby-puke green, with things like bike reflectors as jewels."

In addition to wear, tear and poor repainting, the animals were covered with decades of grime. Plaster had broken, and only remnants remained of many of the panels. The mill itself was falling apart; the elevator had not functioned for decades, and the carousel pieces had to be removed with a cherry picker.

So in addition to renovating and repairing crumbling, 130-year-old Memorial Hall, Please Touch had a carousel to restore as well. The task was a cross-country effort that involved Ohio's Carousels & Carvings, and studios in California and North Carolina. Damaged animals were re-carved and repainted in the richly detailed "Philadelphia style," mechanisms were repaired, plaster redone, and missing pieces re-created. The ceilings were replaced, as were the drum panels, which cover the central mechanism.

Using old photos of the carousel, the studios attempted to re-create it down to the nuances of positioning the animals. The drum panels, painted by Philadelphia resident and Please Touch Museum senior exhibit designer Lorna Kent, feature scenes of Woodside Park in a pastel color scheme to accord with the carousel's original pieces.

By mid-September, it is expected to be fully inhabited and ready for test runs, complete with lights and music.

"This carousel is a significant piece in a number of ways," says chief restorer Goings of Carousels & Carvings. "It's a children's ride, so it's great for kids. It's a great addition to Philadelphia, because it was produced here. It's a great addition to the carousel world because it was almost written off and now it's back.

"It's wonderful that the Please Touch Museum was able to pull this off."

Watch video of the newly installed carousel at

http://go.philly.com/pleaseEndText