Western Pennsylvania Amusement Park Carousel Buildings

Happy Memorial Day! I feel deep appreciation to all deceased veterans today. What's more quintessential to an amusement park than a carousel? Pennsylvania is blessed with many historical carousels, and those have been covered top-to-bottom all over the internet. However, one thing that sees considerably less coverage is the buildings those carousels are in. I was thinking about this, so I figured for today I'd share some fun facts about the various historical carousel buildings in amusement parks around Western Pennsylvania. Just so you know, the facts in this post are purely things that I've heard from other people, so some of these are probably wrong. That's just how things go, but I hope you'll enjoy story nonetheless! And don't worry - I hope to cover each of these park's beautiful rides (except maybe Waldameer's) in-depth in future posts.

Starting off at the amusement park closest to me, Kennywood, we have this nicely-styled building. Being remodeled into Johnny Rockets in 2014, it looks different now, but what most park guests probably don't realize is that this building was the park's original home for its carousel, and dates back to 1899, the year of Kennywood's opening. It served as the home for Kennywood's first two carousels until the late 1920s, the year that the current ride arrived at the park. It needed a larger building, so a new structure was constructed.

 

Even being my home park, this is the best picture I have of the building of Kennywood's current carousel. See the old building in the back?

Something I do have a better picture of is this building in Kennywood's Lost Kennywood section. It never housed a carousel but is based off of West View Park's old carousel building. (Keep WVP in mind. It'll be important later.)

I figured we would hop a bit north to see the carousel building at Conneaut Lake Park. Built around 1910, it was constructed by the T.M. Harton Company, who built carousels, roller coasters, and other amusements for parks all around the east coast. Inside Conneaut's Harton building is the last Harton carousel in existence, although some figures were replaced in the 1980s. As an aside, the T.M. Harton Co. was also completely responsible for the construction and design of Pittsburgh's other major amusement park, West View! (Yes, I realize that the majority of that line is copied verbatim from Kennywood Memories.)

 Moving on back to the southwestern part of the state, we have this fine example at Idlewild. Look familiar? It should, because with close inspection many similarities to Connneaut's building are revealed. In fact, it was also built by the T.M. Harton Company! However, this building has a different PTC carousel inside.

In this picture of Conneaut, one can easily see the striking similarities of the line of windows and the cupola that are shared with Idlewild's structure.

Wrapping the tour up, we arrive at Waldameer. Built circa 1908, this is the park's original and current carousel building, but, like Kennywood, another building resides elsewhere in the park.

 This structure (sorry; best picture I have again!) served as the home for the park's carousel in, don't quote me on this, the 1920s for just a handful of years, as it was so out-of-the-way on the midway it did not receive much foot traffic. As a result, the ride was put back into its original building. In 1988, Waldameer auctioned off its original carousel to build Water World, and some of those funds were used in refurbishing the first building.

That pretty much wraps up our anecdotal tour of amusement park carousel buildings around Western PA. I hope you enjoyed, and who knows, maybe one day we'll even take a look at the machines inside these things! Thanks for reading, and let me know if you'd enjoy more stuff like this in the future.