BUFFALO, NY – "I guess we can say that dreams can come true," beamed Laurie Hauer-LaDuca, as she participated in formal announcement on Tuesday that an historic carousel built in Western New York will be returning here.
The group which Hauer-LaDuca serves as President, Buffalo Heritage Carousel, has been working for years to bring a vintage carousel to Buffalo.
The carousel they targeted was built in 1924 by Herschell –Spillman company in North Tonawanda, and took a rather circuitous route back to this region, beginning when it was purchased brand new, by a New Englander named Dominick De Angeles.
"Mr. De Angelis used the carousel as part of an attraction and he ran it for many years," remarked NYS Assemblyman Sean Ryan (D-Buffalo). "He had it in the greater Boston, Massachusetts area but he passed away in 1952."
His survivors could have sold off the 31 hand carved animals that made up the ride, piece by piece, for tens of thousands of dollars, according to Hauer-LaDuca.
"But the family said, 'no, that's not what our father wanted for this carousel', and they held onto it."
For the more than 60 years it has been in storage, for the past 27 of those, at the Carousel Works in Mansfield, Ohio, which offers safe keeping for such treasures, until such time as they can be restored.
After several years of work, the Wendt foundation came through with a $250,000 grant to buy it, and then Ryan secured $600,000 from the state of New York the state to refurbish it and move it here.
The conditions are that it be located somewhere at Canalside (an exact site has yet to be determined), that it will solar powered, and that it will be a year around attraction, enclosed in a roundhouse similar to the one protecting the Denzel Carousel on Rochester's waterfront.
That part of the project, which involves a fireproof building, an ancillary gift shop, and an interpretive center, will cost considerably more
"As a minimum benchmark maybe $3 million," said Hauer-LaDuca when estimating the total costs associated with the project.
Ryan thinks finding that kind of money will be easier than grabbing a brass ring.
"It's not a massive amount of money and we're very confident we're going to get there with a combination of help from Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation along with private contributions many of which we think will be very small, but which will add up to a lot of money."
There's one more caveat to all this.
In exchange for his commitment to work to secure the restoration funds, Assemblyman Ryan got Buffalo Heritage Carousel, which will operate the attraction, to agree to charge no more than $1 per ride when it is up and running in the summer of 2017.
