You should be looking at a glass box on the waterfront. Inside that box is a carousel. Forty-eight hand-carved wooden horses and two chariots, built in nineteen twenty-two in Philadelphia. Originally installed at Idora Park in Youngstown, Ohio — back when Youngstown was a booming steel city.
When Idora Park closed in nineteen eighty-four, the carousel was put up for auction. It was about to be sold off piece by piece — individual horses to collectors, the machine scrapped. A woman named Jane Walentas bought the whole thing for three hundred eighty-five thousand dollars.
Then she took it home and spent the next twenty-seven years fixing it. With an X-Acto knife.
Sixty-two years of accumulated park paint — layer after layer of cheap color slapped on between seasons. Jane scraped it off by hand. Horse by horse. Inch by inch. Uncovering the original nineteen twenty-two color palette and the fine detail of the original carvings. She photographed every discovery. Made color matches. Drew
restoration guides. Horse by horse. For twenty-seven years.
During the restoration, her husband David — the developer who'd bought most of DUMBO for twelve million dollars — reportedly brought a potential buyer to the studio. The buyer offered twelve million for the unfinished carousel. Jane didn't look up from the horse she was scraping and said: tell him it's not for sale. And tell him to close
