They Used to Race Round and Round in Circles : Muckenthaler’s Carousel Exhibit Recalls a Time When Elaborate, Fanciful, Hardwood Horses Let Dreams Take Flight

They’ve been turned by men and by horses, by steam and by electricity. But the real power of the American carousel has come from daydreams.

The ups and downs of the merry-go-round are traced in “Carousels: The Tangible Fantasy of Charles Looff,” a collection of antique figures and memorabilia on exhibit at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center through Dec. 30. Curated by Scott Ringwelski and Robbi Rustuen of Long Beach, the show traces the evolution of the ride through Looff, who, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, brightened the lives of the working folk with his glittering, spinning machines.

“When carousels were new, they were considered a white-knuckler ride,” Ringwelski said. “In a gray, industrialized society where there was very little music and color, people saw them as something big, fast, elaborate. By riding the carousel, you could become a Pony Express rider on the frontier, or a knight in shining armor, or a circus performer.

“It was a chance to let your dreams take flight. Three minutes of total fantasy, all for the price of a carousel ride.”

Drawn from six private collections across the West, the Muckenthaler exhibit ranges from a pair of weathered hand-carved panthers (1890) to a carefully restored gold-winged Pegasus (1915) and a prancing stallion (1880) with a coat of bright green paint and a breastplate of sparkling “jewels.”

“Carousels are a chunk of history,” said Ringwelski, who has studied the topic for more than 14 years. “You can look at a carousel and see, frozen in wood, something that was a trend of a particular time or place. Carved in the trappings of the horses are the story of the average person . . . their hopes, their fears, their fantasies.”

A 1912 black stallion with a six-gun and blanket-roll across its gold-trimmed saddle glamorizes the Pony Express riders of the dime novels. A foursome of noble giraffes built in 1908 remembers America’s turn-of-the-century fascination with the exotic mysteries of Africa. And a 1905 armored horse, complete with chemfron (head protector) and crinit (neck armor), demonstrates the nation’s turn-of-the-century romance with Medieval lore.

Actually, the first carousel was born in Medieval times. As the story goes, while the knights were showing off their horsemanship at fancy tournaments, squires and pages, lacking their own horses, developed a crude, hand-turned machine on which they imitated their lords’ jousting. In 1673, Raphaelle Folyarte capitalized on the idea with his “Royalle Carousell,” a contraption that he promised would “not only afford great pleasure . . . but sufficient instruction to all ingenious horsemanship with all the usual practices thereof.”

Soon, variations on Folyarte’s machine were the hit of European country fairs. Between 1860 and 1885, English engineer and tinkerer Fredrick Savage revolutionized the carousel, introducing the first steam-powered machine and “Savage Motion,” an overhead crank system that allowed the figures to “leap” in place.

Savage also patented the mechanism that made his carousels rotate clockwise, which is why virtually all English machines (called “roundabouts,” a term that evolved into “merry-go-rounds”) move that direction. Those that turned counterclockwise essentially were blatant attempts to circumvent Savage’s patents.

For the further trivia-minded, Rustuen explained that “carousel” generally refers to the larger and more elaborate, permanent machines that have up to five concentric rings of carved figures. The “merry-go-round” tends to be a smaller, more portable version found at traveling fairs and circuses.

Looff, a New York furniture carver, jumped on the merry-go-round craze with his first carousel figures in 1875. With their fiery poses and brilliant trappings, his finely crafted animals captured the imagination of the everyman, while the music from the carousel’s band organ provided a free concert for riders and spectators.

“Most people couldn’t afford musical instruments then. They were toys for the rich,” noted Ringwelski. “Then Looff came in with these amazing band organs that created the sound of a 50-piece band. They were like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. They’d just reach out and draw people in.”

By 1880, one of Looff’s dream machines was making waves on Coney Island, where it whirled in the ballroom of the elegant Feltman’s Ocean Pavilion. It reigned supreme until 1893, when a Ferris Wheel, twinkling with hundreds of newfangled electric lights, was installed next door. (To recapture the glitter-hungry crowds, resort owner Charles Feltman placed blinking carbon filament bulbs behind the horses’ jewels.)

Ringwelski and Rustuen’s study of carousels got into full swing in the late 1970s, when through their office window, they watched the decay and dismantling of The Pike, an amusement park near downtown Long Beach. Once one of the country’s premiere entertainment centers, The Pike was home to an original Looff carousel and Hippodrome, a cavernous structure that protected the machine from the elements. The entire site was razed by 1978. Only the Hippodrome, which now houses an electrical bingo game, still stands.

“One day, they came out and took down the carousel. Just like that, it was gone. We wondered if anyone realized the loss,” Ringwelski recalled.

Determined to learn its fate, Ringwelski and Rustuen traced the machine to a garage in Pomona. Most of the figures had been sold to collectors and dealers. Undaunted, the pair continued their research, and have written a book on carousel history, “Carousels: The Tangible Fantasy.”

“Looff was something of a revolutionary,” Ringwelski said. “He pretty much founded the amusement (park) industry as we know it. But he was always running afoul of people.

“For example, before the introduction of steam power, he used horses to pull the carousels around,” he added. “But then the animal rights people got on him for being inhumane, so he hired men to do it. Apparently that was OK.”

And then there was the question of modesty.

“The Victorians frowned on men and women touching in public,” Ringwelski said. “So here comes Looff with this machine that actually encourages a gentleman to put his arm around a lady’s waist to keep her from falling off. He got a lot of flak for it.

“Then he created a snowshoe saddle for the horses so the ladies could ride sidesaddle, but even that got him in trouble. I mean, my goodness, you could see their ankles!”

From his factory in Brooklyn, and later from Crescent Park, one of several family-owned amusement centers, Looff manufactured machines for customers along the East Coast. In 1907, the first Looff carousel to spin west of the Rockies was installed in Seattle’s Luna Park. That machine, salvaged when the park burned down in 1913, was installed at Long Beach’s Shoreline Village shopping center in 1982.

In 1910, Looff and his family also headed West. They made their home at The Pike, setting up housekeeping in an apartment in the carousel Hippodrome. Charles Looff died in 1918. By the late 1920s, said Ringwelski, the American carousel business was on its last legs too.

“When the roller coaster and other thrill rides came along, people started thinking of the carousel as something for old folks and kids,” he said. “Gradually, the factories stopped making them.”

The last wooden carousel was made in 1934. Today, only a handful of manufacturers make the rides, mass-producing the figures from fiberglass or cast aluminum. According to Ringwelski, of the nearly 6,000 wooden carousels that once operated in the U.S., only about 150 remain, including the Looff carousels at Shoreline Village, San Diego’s Seaport Village and the Santa Cruz boardwalk.

“Carousels: The Tangible Fantasy of Charles Looff” continues through Dec. 30 at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton. Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Information: (714) 738-6595.