Seaside Heights carousel reopening: You might need your mittens

SEASIDE HEIGHTS - The borough's carousel has come home at last, but it will likely be a few more months before you'll be able to ride it.

Mayor Anthony Vaz said the aim is to have the special celebration around the holidays, perhaps near Thanksgiving or in December, to mark the Christmas season. The building where the carousel will reside also contains a Seaside Heights history museum.

"Christmas, to me, probably would be best," Vaz said, adding that opening the refurbished carousel then could add some special luster to the holiday season.

Carousels & Carvings, one of only two businesses in the U.S. that restores old merry-go-rounds, took longer than expected to complete the necessary work on the carousel, Vaz said. The ride's decking and mechanics had to be repaired and refurbished, a lengthy process.

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It will take several weeks to reassemble the ride; the horses and other animals in the carousel's menagerie have been in storage in a Bay Boulevard building after being repainted and repaired.

The carousel, formerly located at Casino Pier, includes more than 50 wooden horses, as well as two chariots, two camels, one lion and one tiger.

Built in 1910, the ride was originally located at Burlington Island Park near the Delaware River. A 1928 fire destroyed most of that amusement park but only damaged the carousel. It was fixed, disassembled and moved to Seaside Heights during the Great Depression.

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G.A. Dentzel and Charles I.D. Looff were pioneer carousel manufacturers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At least 18 figures — more than a dozen horses, a lion and a tiger — on the Seaside carousel were made by Dentzel between the 1890s and 1910 in Philadelphia, according to a carousel history compiled by the Seaside Park Historical Society. Other figures on the ride were made by Looff.

In 2014, Casino Pier's owners, the Storino family, announced that they planned to sell the merry-go-round, as ridership had declined and maintenance costs were high. Seaside Heights acquired it in 2017 after agreeing to swap 1.36 acres of beach with Casino Pier, allowing the rebuilding of the pier on the sand after it was badly damaged by Superstorm Sandy.

The ride shut down in April 2019.

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The carousel is named after Ortley Beach resident Dr. Floyd L. Moreland, who oversaw the restoration of the badly deteriorated ride in the 1980s. His friends and family members spent countless weekends inside the then-unheated carousel building in the off-season, painstakingly repairing the historic structure.

Vaz said the 1910 Dentzel-Looff merry-go-round was returned to the borough July 10, after being restored at Carousels & Carvings in Ohio. Borough officials had initially hoped to hold a special ceremony to open the carousel on July 25 (National Carousel Day) or in early August at its new home, a specially constructed building on the north end of the boardwalk, between Sampson and Carteret avenues.

Seaside Heights also acquired the parking lot next to the boardwalk in the deal, and that's where the carousel will now reside.

To reopen the ride, the borough will have to pass a state inspection, and employees will have to be trained so they can properly operate it, Vaz said.

"We'll follow all the rules," Vaz said. "It will take awhile to get it ready."

Jean Mikle covers Toms River and several other Ocean County towns, and has been writing about local government and politics at the Jersey Shore for nearly 39 years.  She's also passionate about the Shore's storied music scene. Contact her: @jeanmikle, jmikle@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Seaside Heights carousel reopening could be delayed to Christmastime