Of course, the day I visited, the carousel was closed...so, see additional photos here: (
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On June 1, 2017, the San Diego Union Tribune (
visit link) ran the following:
"Sale of historic Balboa Park Carousel imminent
Roger Showley
The Balboa Park Carousel, which has been spinning kids and challenging them to grab the brass ring for more than a century, is being sold to the Friends of Balboa Park to keep it spinning in place.
Executive Director John Bolthouse said Thursday the sale of the 1910 merry-go-round, located near the entrance to the San Diego Zoo, is in escrow and due to close in a few weeks with the sellers, La Mesa civil engineer Bill Steen and his partners.
“It’s the right thing to do for the organization but also Balboa Park and the citizens of San Diego,” Bolthouse said. “This asset is important enough to ensure it stays in Balboa Park and that we are the right organization to do that.”
The Friends of Balboa Park spent about eight months analyzing the project and decided to take on its most ambitious undertaking yet, Bolthouse said.
For a $3 fare, riders can hop aboard 52 animals and three chariots for a relatively fast, three-minute ride to nowhere. The outer ring offers a chance to grab the brass ring and win a free ride. Nearby is quaint kiddie ride on butterflies that also would be included in the sale. The vintage ticket booth also goes along in the package.
Landscape architect Vicki Estrada, who inadvertently made the sale public Tuesday at a community forum on the Balboa Park’s future, said she remembers first riding the carousel as a second grader in the late-1950s while living in City Heights.
“The first thing I remember was trying to go for the brass ring,” she said. “I was too little and couldn’t reach it. I just remember a lot of us that grew up here, we wouldn’t go to the zoo — sometimes we’d just go to Balboa Park to ride the carousel, the butterfly and the model train.”
The San Diego Zoo owns the miniature train immediately west of the carousel but had previously declined to buy the carousel as well.
Preservation architect David Marshall, who is completing a report for the buyers, said the carousel is in “very good condition,” with many of the original elements, not to mention the carousel figures and brass ring game, intact.
“We hired as part of the team that put the report together a carousel expert from Oregon,” Marshall said.” He owns quite a few and has analyzed a lot of them. He considers it extremely rare, extremely valuable, not only in the U.S. but in the world, for carousels of that era.”
Marshall said he will recommend returning the original color scheme to the building, now painted yellow and white, removing some of the roof extensions added in the 1960s and upgrading the lighting, electrical panel and other innards. The carousel still sports its original band organ, murals and other elements.
“It is in very good condition and has been well maintained,” he said.
The price and other details will be disclosed later but Bolthouse said a third of the cost has been raised and a community fund-raising campaign will be launched to make up the difference and finance some improvements to security and other features.
Bruce Coons, executive director of the Save Our Heritage Organisation, said he had been alerted to the pending sale.
“We think it’s great,” he said.
The carousel was built by the Herschell-Spillman factory in North Tonawanda, N.Y., in 1910 and first operated at Luna Park in Los Angeles and then at the Tent City campground south of the Hotel del Coronado. It was relocated briefly to the Panama-California Exposition fairgrounds in 1915 and moved permanently to the park in 1922. It was relocated to its present site in 1968.
Steen bought the carousel in 1977 from Virginia Long, whose family had been involved with it since the 1920s, according to her daughter, KPBS radio host Sally Hixson. He was not available to comment but in previous interviews had said previously that he was determined to keep ownership local and the carousel still operating.
Elsewhere, many carousels have been broken up and their animals sold to collectors. On the Antiques Carousel website, carousel animals of the same vintage are going for as much as $66,500 apiece.
“The carousel is in excellent condition, considering its age,” Bolthouse said. “It has a magical sense to it. Even in spite of the fact that it has very little signage and no market, people know it’s there and generations and generations have been introduced to Balboa Park through it and keep being introduced to it.”
Bolthouse said as many as seven employees operate and manage the carousel and all have been asked to remain on the job — daily during the summer and on weekends and holidays the rest of the year.
He said the present lease granted the city the first right of refusal to buy the carousel, if it became available. When the city passed on the option, the friends group stepped forward as its first major acquisition and operational property since it was founded in 1999.
Other projects have included landscaping improvements, informational kiosks and domed monumental entry gateways at Park Boulevard and Presidents Way.
The carousel will provide the group’s first ongoing revenue source that will help further other projects, Bolthouse said. The carousel currently grosses about $250,000 a year, he said. But as a nonprofit, the friends hope the city annual lease payment of 25 percent of gross receipts can be reduced to a minimal amount.
Landscape architect Estrada said she took her own two children on the carousel many times as they were growing up and lately shared the experience with one of her grandchildren, who live out of town. But she said to attract today’s digitally-minded youngsters and their hipster parents, the operators should try some new ideas.
“Maybe one day is heavy metal day, or blue grass Sunday,” she said. “Maybe you set up a few tables and eat on the carousel as it goes around.”
At the same time, she said, research shows that today’s youngsters prefer simple, old-fashioned attractions to the latest spiffy playground equipment on the market.
“We have to reintroduce today’s kids to the old stuff,” she said."