Why Jane's Carousel matters.
Jane's Carousel is a meticulously restored amusement artifact where DUMBO's industrial waterfront character meets Philadelphia Toboggan Company craftsmanship, Jean Nouvel's transparent architecture and an East River setting beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
Set within Brooklyn Bridge Park near Water Street and just steps from the Manhattan Bridge, the carousel occupies the Empire Fulton Ferry waterfront between two great East River crossings with Lower Manhattan directly across the water. Ateliers Jean Nouvel enclosed the 50-foot-diameter machine within a 72-by-72-foot square pavilion raised above the flood line, centering the horses beneath a circular skylight equal to the carousel's diameter. Four cylindrical steel columns stand back from the facades, leaving the transparent enclosure visually open as thick self-supporting acrylic panels frame distorted views toward the bridges. Folding steel-and-acrylic doors divide the north and south elevations into eighteen movable sections apiece, allowing those walls to open toward the park and river in four configurations. The result is an unusually precise union of historic amusement craftsmanship and contemporary architecture, with the preserved wooden machine remaining visually dominant inside a purpose-built transparent enclosure at the East River's edge.
What defines Jane's Carousel.
Jane's Carousel is best known for preserving Philadelphia Toboggan Company No. 61, a three-row machine built in 1922 with 48 carved horses and two chariots for Idora Park in Youngstown, Ohio. Thirty of its horses are jumpers and eighteen are stationary figures, accompanied by original scenery panels, rounding boards, crests, center pole and platform. Idora Park operated in a city whose steel industry supported a substantial amusement culture, giving PTC No. 61 its first home during the peak period of American carousel production. Jane and David Walentas purchased the complete machine at auction on October 21, 1984 after Idora Park closed, preventing its components from being dispersed through separate sales. Jane Walentas moved the carousel to her Washington Street studio in DUMBO and undertook the restoration herself after rejecting stripping methods proposed by professional restorers. Her earliest work included carpentry repairs and removing 62 years of accumulated park paint by hand with an X-Acto knife, a process that exposed the original 1922 coloration and carved detailing beneath later coatings. Research into those surviving finishes guided color matching and the replacement of missing embellishments as work continued for more than two decades. The restored carousel eventually became a gift from Jane and David Walentas to Brooklyn Bridge Park, and its public opening on September 16, 2011 completed a physical migration from an Ohio amusement park to the Brooklyn waterfront.
The carousel's arrival in Brooklyn grew from a much longer effort to convert an obsolete working waterfront into public parkland. David Walentas had included a historic carousel in his 1983 master plan for Empire Fulton Ferry State Park, one year before the Idora Park machine came to auction. A separate waterfront campaign gathered momentum after the Port Authority announced plans in 1984 to sell former cargo piers for commercial development, prompting community advocates to press for public use along the shoreline. The Brooklyn Heights Association advanced its Harbor Park proposal in 1989, and years of advocacy preceded publication of the Brooklyn Bridge Park master plan in 2000. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates designed the larger park, whose construction began in January 2009 across former maritime infrastructure stretching along 1.3 miles of East River shoreline. Jane's Carousel entered the developing park as a privately restored historic object donated with its specially commissioned enclosure; Brooklyn Bridge Park valued the donated carousel at $4.25 million and the pavilion at $9.2 million in its financial statements. The 2011 opening coincided with the reopening of the refurbished Empire Fulton Ferry section, placing the machine within a public landscape created after decades of waterfront advocacy. Travel + Leisure subsequently honored the pavilion with its 2012 Design Award for Best Public Space, giving the carousel's new architectural home an early international design distinction.
How Jane's Carousel fits.
Jane's Carousel works as the anchor for a DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights outing connecting nineteenth-century waterfront commerce, abolitionist Brooklyn and a chamber-music institution born inside a working harbor vessel.
Begin at St. Ann's Warehouse, whose permanent home occupies the surviving walls of an 1860 Tobacco Warehouse within Brooklyn Bridge Park. St. Ann's began presenting performances at the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in 1980, moved into a former DUMBO spice-milling factory in 2001 and reached the Tobacco Warehouse in 2015 under founder and artistic director Susan Feldman. Marvel inserted a new steel structure inside the surviving two-story brick shell, adding a glass-brick clerestory, a flexible theater seating 300 to 700 people and a continuous technical catwalk; Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates designed the enclosed Max Family Garden. The project received honors including an AIA National Honor Award for Architecture and the Municipal Art Society's MASterworks Award for Best Adaptive Reuse. Continue to Plymouth Church, founded in Brooklyn Heights in 1847 by 21 New England Congregationalists who selected Henry Ward Beecher as their first pastor. Beecher's antislavery preaching made the congregation a major abolitionist center, and Plymouth became associated with the Underground Railroad through assistance given to fugitives traveling north. In February 1860, Beecher conducted a public fundraising event that raised $900 to purchase the freedom of a young enslaved girl known as Pinky, whose commemorative gold ring later returned to the church. J. C. Wells designed the present sanctuary after fire damaged the first church in 1849; its auditorium-like plan, cast-iron balcony columns and emphasis on unobstructed preaching distinguished the building from conventional church interiors. Conclude with Bargemusic, founded by violinist and violist Olga Bloom after she abandoned her performing career in 1976 at age 57 to create a chamber-music venue on the Brooklyn waterfront. Bloom selected a 100-foot steel barge built in 1899 that had spent part of its working career carrying hand-loaded coffee sacks for the Erie Lackawanna Railroad, converting industrial harbor infrastructure into an intimate concert hall. Bargemusic began performances in 1977 and presented close to 9,000 concerts during its decades aboard the vessel. In 2025 the organization moved performances to the Boathouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park, where artistic director Mark Peskanov continued its chamber-music program with admission-free concerts. The progression moves from the preservation of an industrial warehouse for experimental theater through Plymouth Church's abolitionist history and culminates in Olga Bloom's conversion of a nineteenth-century working barge into a long-running chamber-music institution, connecting three distinct chapters of Brooklyn's waterfront and cultural history.
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