It's a beautiful day for a stroll here in the Buffalo region. Accordingly, this afternoon Hil and I perambulated our way to the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum, just three blocks away. Except for us it was five blocks, because we took a wrong turn on Thompson Street.

Tonawanda in the late nineteenth century was the leading producer of automatic organs in America. The Allan Herschell Company started as a foundry making small steam engines. After a while the owner noticed that quite a few of his engines were being sold to New York City companies that used them to power carrousels. He decided to cut out the middlemen. Besides organ manufacturing, Tonawanda was a major source of fine cabinetry, so Mr. Herschell hired a bunch of German immigrant woodcarvers and set up a factory to manufacture his own line of carrousels.

The company survived the transition from steam-powered equipment to electric and internal-combustion powered gear, but moved factories in the 1950s. The old complex decayed until the 1980s, when a group of preservationists acquired it and began restoration. Today there's a nice museum, with two operating carousels. One is trailer-based for a traveling carnival, manufactured in 1923 with a gasoline engine, while the other was a 1916 semi-permanent with a huge honking electric motor. Both are in use, and Hil and I got to ride the older one. (The traveling one is kiddy-sized, with the mounts being the size of Shetland ponies.) Both had been converted to use modern electric motors, for safety and efficiency reasons.

It wasn't a big museum; an hour or two is all it takes to tour the place. But I'm glad I went, and I expect I'll be back sometime.

Posted by: Boviate at 04:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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