Nunley’s Carousel

I was born in a miraculous time. When I was three, if you drove a short distance from our home, there was a singular building rising over the streetscape with an octagonal roof and a leaping horse on top. Once you stepped out of the car, the place’s charms were felt immediately, right there in the sunshine… a multicolored Ferris Wheel with slightly swaying cars, a circle of child-sized boats with steering wheels and bells, turning in light blue, rippled water. Rides as far as you could see, an afternoon’s worth. Also an expansive, colorful golf course, with moving parts. Children, teens, parents, grandparents, all seemed under the spell of this happy place in the sun.

Nunley’s Carousel opened as a carousel pavilion and restaurant in 1940 in Baldwin, New York, my hometown. The carousel itself was carved in 1912 by the renowned company Stein and Goldstein for Golden City Park, a Coney Island-like resort in Canarsie, Brooklyn. It came to Baldwin when Robert Moses’ Belt Parkway, which was planned to run through Canarsie’s waterfront area, forced Golden City to close in 1939. Third generation amusement park impresario William Nunley bought the homeless carousel and moved it (and the pavilion) to Sunrise Highway, where he counted on the burgeoning suburban automobile culture to make his new park profitable, which it did.

Nunley’s has always been part of my life, starting as a child who adored the rides in the Wurlitzer organ atmosphere. Like many kids who “grew up” there, I was first attracted to the unthreatening rides… the Boat Ride, the Hand Cars (my brothers and I called them “the trains”), the Sky Fighters, the Hot Rods. In junior high I spent hours at the arcade, and later in high school I operated the rides for two summers as my first ever job. I attended the auction on the sad day when all of Nunley’s was sold off and physically separated, and was relieved by the news that the carousel would remain intact and be restored. In 2018, I came upon an online photo of my favorite Nunley’s horse— black with roses— as it used to look in its old setting in Baldwin, and knew it would make a great painting. When I posted the finished work online, the outpouring from Long Islanders who remembered the horse, carousel, and park with such fondness was overwhelming. It encouraged me to make more artworks of the brilliant carved horses from that magical little place.

My series came to the attention of the Baldwin Civic Association, who asked if I could produce a mural for the Baldwin LIRR station as part of a beautification project. After civic board and MTA meetings, an image, size, and place for the mural were decided. The mural was completed in early 2019, and installation at the train station scheduled for that April. The directors of the refurbished Nunley’s carousel offered the carousel pavilion at the Cradle of Aviation Museum for an event to exhibit my Nunley’s artwork series and to unveil the mural panel to the public. The event was held in March 2019 and was attended by many in the Long Island community who remember Nunley’s from a beautiful, simpler time.