Once a children's delight in hundreds of towns and cities, carousels in the U.S. now number fewer than 100. Amusement parks have been replacing costly old carousels with modern plastic and aluminum rides that are both peppier and easier to maintain. Carousels, meanwhile, are chopped up, their horses turned into bar stools, heads cut from bodies, and carved wooden animals sold to antique dealers. "Carousels are diminishing to a terrible extent," mourns Frederick Fried, author of A Pictorial History of the Carousel. To halt the destruction, more than 200 lovers of that old amusement-park staple gathered in Sandwich, Mass., on...
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