In the cavernous basement of Akron’s O’Neil’s building, rows of carousel horses stand at attention. They are poised; their knees are bent, their nostrils flared.
Among the horses is scattered an occasional tiger, ostrich or cat with an eyepatch. Most days, all are covered by a tarp.
Around them, wrapped and cordoned off by fencing, are scenic panels that depict the Civic Theatre, Stan Hywet Hall, Derby Downs and the Akron Air Dock, among other local landmarks. And then there are the guts of the carousel: the motor and pulley and gears.
The pieces of the former Chapel Hill Mall carousel are being preserved by the City of Akron. But city officials said they do not know when the animals might accept riders again.
“We’re keeping it safe for now, and there are no current plans to place it anywhere at this time,” Akron spokesperson Stephanie Marsh said in an email.
Akron took the carousel as a donation in 2021, when Chapel Hill Mall closed. At the time, former Deputy Mayor James Hardy said, he thought it might be incorporated into Lock 3 park. But the park opened with the carousel still in the basement.
In order to bring the horses (and tiger, ostrich and pirate cat) back to life, the city would need to build a structure to house the hand-carved, hand-painted carousel. But the cost to do so — and the space requirements — mean the animals are still in limbo, and are likely to stay that way, despite broad interest in the former mall merry-go-round.
“If I saw it now, I’d probably tear up,” said Josh Mandel, 39.
Mandel, who lives in Hudson, said memories of the carousel take him back to happier times — of smiles so big, they hurt his cheeks. He’d like to see the carousel reopen in Akron, so more people can experience the joy he did when he was a teen.
Carousel needs a structure to house it
Officials haven’t ruled out making the carousel operational in the future or selling it to an area group that would, Marsh said in an email.
But an early proposal to add it to Lock 3’s park ran into space and cost constraints. Because the carousel was built for indoor use, any location requires a separate structure to be constructed — a 60-by-60-foot space, 25 feet tall, at an estimated cost of between $650,000 and $1.9 million, said Patricia Porter, a digital media assistant with the Akron Mayor’s office. Since the Lock 3 project was completed in 2024, over budget, Porter said in an email, the carousel didn’t fit into the city’s plan.
Locals who miss the carousel’s charms say there are plenty of places it could go. Akron Children’s Hospital? Summit Lake? The Summit County Fairgrounds?
“The vision was there; the design wasn’t,” Hardy said. “I just didn’t want to see it go. … I still think it would be amazing to see it in a park somewhere.”
Chris Caccamo thinks the Summit County Fairgrounds is the ideal location. Caccamo, 66, has always loved horses — she’s long wanted a carousel horse for her Cuyahoga Falls home, and she used to enjoy taking her niece to ride at Chapel Hill Mall.
The fairgrounds are centrally located, she said, and she thinks it would fit in perfectly with the other offerings there. But most importantly, she wants to see it in action again.
“The horses were so beautiful,” she said. “I do hope they find a good, stable location for it. It’s a shame they put it in storage.”
The carousel’s history
The carousel pieces include 30 animals and two chariots, and city staff check on them a couple times a month, said Chris Griffith, Akron’s downtown operations manager. Employees are in and out of the space several times daily; the O’Neil’s basement is storage for all of downtown.
The carousel is fenced in and secured, and many of the pieces are boxed and wrapped; for those reasons, Griffith said, there’s no way to turn the carousel on to check that it can still run. Besides, it’s too tall to be assembled in the space, and the structural columns are too close together for it to fit. (If it did, putting the carousel indoors in the Lock 3 area was another option under consideration.)
Lock 3 has Archie the snowman, another Chapel Hill escapee, as well as other holiday decorations from the mall.
The Mansfield company that made the carousel, Carousel Works, has shut down, but Eric Tomlinson worked there for 11 years. Tomlinson, now the owner of All Around Carousels, suggested the city sell sponsorships to raise money to build the needed structure, letting people put their names on a plaque on individual figures.
He guessed the carousel — made of hand-carved wood — would have cost between $300,000 and $400,000 to make when it was built in the 1990s. Now, the same carousel would go for $1 million, Tomlinson said. A structure is likely to cost $2 million to build.
In Mansfield, Tomlinson said Richland Carrousel Park enjoys regular visitors. He thinks placing the Chapel Hill carousel in a park could be a similar draw — and that the public would help pay for it.
Once it’s back up and running, he said, the carousel could last for a century.
What kind of structure?
Patrick Wentzel wants to be there for the reopening, whenever it may be.
Wentzel, the president of the National Carousel Association, lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia, but said he’d taken his children to ride on Akron’s carousel years ago.
“It’s a fun carousel,” he said. “It would be nice to see it run again.”
He described the carousel as a menagerie — it has two cats, a tiger, a rabbit, a stork, an ostrich and three bears, including two pandas. Plus all those horses.
The best option for a building to house it, he said, is one that includes a community room, where people can host weddings or birthday parties. That could bring in money to offset the costs of building a structure and keep the carousel open as many days as possible.
More and more, he said, such conversations become political questions of where a community wants to invest. But Wentzel said the carousel could be a park centerpiece, part of a destination. He pointed to Tuscora Park in New Philadelphia, where a 1928 carousel is joined by a Ferris wheel, miniature golf and other attractions.
“If you ask me,” Wentzel said, “carousels should be in a family-friendly place.”
Hardy, the former deputy mayor who is also a former Akron City Council member, said he’d like the carousel to be free for children to use, in a park, perhaps in Summit Lake, where the city has been working on a redevelopment plan. Because so many Akron children live in poverty, Hardy said, a free ride on a carousel could be a bit of wonder that could help families create happy memories.
‘People are expecting it’
David Burdge, 39, created some of those happy memories at the carousel himself.
Burdge, a Cuyahoga Falls resident, said the mid-1990s, when the carousel was added to the Chapel Hill Mall’s new food court, was a fun time to be a kid. Before the mall closed, he was able to share the carousel with his daughter. She was always partial to the panda and to any of the horses that had flowing, uncarved hair.
When it was first reported that the carousel would move to Lock 3, Burdge said he was excited to see that it would be repurposed. Now, he thinks Akron Children’s Hospital might be a good landing place.
“I just don’t understand why they didn’t make plans for it,” he said of the city.
Highland Square resident Jessica Anshutz has made a hobby of photographing old malls and took pictures of the Chapel Hill Carousel while it was still operational. As the mall was closing, she said, what would happen to the carousel was a huge question.
Anshutz, 49, said she used to love to ride the pirate cat. The carousel came to be part of the mall’s identity, she said; when it was put in in 1994 and the food court added, the carousel horse was featured on mall advertising.
She thinks it might fit in an empty downtown building, if the city doesn’t have the means to build a new structure. While she’s glad the mall’s buyer had the foresight to donate the carousel to the city, she’s disappointed Akron officials haven’t moved forward with finding it a new home.
“People are expecting it,” she said. “It could bring people a lot of joy and we need it, specifically in Akron.”
Reopening the carousel, she said, could also help rebuild community in the city and give a new third space for people to spend time and form memories.
Even something as simple as the pirate cat can help bring people together, Anshutz said.
“To me, it’s not just a carousel,” she said. “These things are touchstones of the past. … I’d really love to see it come out of retirement.”
Video courtesy of Jessica Anshutz.