They are on display in our storefront level windows at least for the month of December, while final details for a display at Collinwood Nottingham Library are worked out.
We are excited to host the horses and hopes that our display continues to remind the neighborhood about our exciting plans to rebuild the Carrousel at its original location at Euclid Beach State Park.
Speaking of which, the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an article about the status of the Carrousel. The content of the article is listed below:
This article is available at the Plain Dealer's website at:
Historical society just sits on Euclid Beach's carousel horses
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Laura Johnston
Plain Dealer Reporter
Buying the horses was supposed to be the hard part.
That accomplished, Cleveland leaders dreamed of restoring the legendary Euclid Beach Carousel to the lake, luring millions of visitors to a grand North Coast Harbor.
But a decade after they saved the carousel at auction, its 58 wooden horses and two chariots remain locked in storage in Macedonia, now restored and preserved by the Western Reserve Historical Society.
The society has no immediate plans for the 1909 carousel, President Gainor Davis said. The downtown proposal disintegrated years ago, and no group has the $10 million necessary to rebuild and maintain the carousel. Though local carousel groups say that number is inflated, seven years ago the estimate was $5 million.
"It will eventually be brought back into operation, but unfortunately not by us immediately," Davis said. "It's going to have to be a community effort."
The neighborhood around Euclid Beach Park - an oasis of rides and games, teenage dances and family picnics until 1969 - wants the carousel back to where East 169th Street ends at Lake Erie. Locals and visitors have signed petitions at hangouts, begging the historical society to work with the North Collinwood community. Yet activists say the historical society won't even consider it.
"They don't appear to have a plan for the carousel," said Elva Brodnick, president of Euclid Beach Park Now. "They have tried to do nothing with it. They're just trying to blow us off."
The Cleveland Planning Commission in 2004 approved placing the carousel at Euclid Beach, now open to the public as a state park. Brodnick wants to start raising money and the nonprofit Northeast Shores Development Corp. hopes to study the plan's feasibility.
But first, they need a letter from the historical society granting access to the carousel.
That hasn't happened.
Frustrated, Northeast Shores Executive Director Brian Friedman wrote to Sen. George Voinovich, detailing a conversation he had with Davis last spring. In an Oct. 22 letter, Friedman said Davis told him some carousel horses would be sold in a capital campaign.
City Councilman Michael Polensek got a copy of the letter and fired off his own to Davis.
"This magical machine was never intended to be put on the auction or sale block again," he wrote. "Groups are prepared to go to the wall to bring the carrousel back to life, not in pieces or in some far-off private collection, but intact and operating back home where it belongs in Cleveland."
Davis denied any plans to sell parts of the carousel.
That's good news to Polensek, who remembers the carousel as a wondrous part of his childhood. But local activists aren't satisfied.
"If they decide to frame the conversation in that nobody has financial ability to re-erect it, it leaves a strategy in that they can say, 'Why can't we sell it off piecemeal? It's foolish to just leave it sitting in a warehouse,' " Friedman said.
Joe Tomaro, who with his business partner owns Euclid Beach paraphernalia, from ride cars to the famous, funhouse sentry Laughing Sal, just wants to see the restored carousel horses.
"They totally shut the door on everything," Tomaro said. "It just never materialized."
http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/119390611027660.xml&coll=2&thispage=1
2 comments:
I would like to see the restored horses. I would not be too sure the Society has done what they say they have done.
I have been searching for a few years on the internet about what is going on with the carousel that used to be at Old Orchard Beach in Maine (the Euclid Beach Carousel). My main concern is that the bandorgan that used to play when the carousel operated is at is still at Old Orchard Beach and not operating. It actually seems to have been abused since the metal strip over the snare drum has been wripped off. Who knows what other kind of damage has been done to it. I remember it being a really impressive instrument growing up. I would try to contact Palace Playland and try to buy it. Me being a musician myself, would hate to see a treasure like that be destroyed. I would try to purchase it if possible...since they have no intention of using it anymore.
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