The Flying Horses of Morris Cove: How the Lighthouse Point Carousel Survived a Century, and One Very Bad Night

In the middle of the night on Aug. 13, a sudden storm tore across Lighthouse Point Park in Morris Cove. It was an “unforecasted straight-line downburst” with winds of 105 miles per hour, the New Haven Independent reported. Ninety-five trees came down or had to be removed, and the historic carousel building was badly damaged.

“It almost looked like a bomb went off in the building,” Mayor Justin Elicker told WSHU. The storm pushed the building off its foundation, the station reported, and blew glass and debris across the playground, the beach and the lawns.

Parks Director Max Webster called it the worst storm damage at the park since the hurricane of 1938, according to the Independent.

And yet the heart of the place survived. “Amazingly, the carousel itself is largely spared from the damage,” Elicker said. The horses and other pieces have been moved to an off-site location while the city works on the building.

The park reopened on Sept. 18. The carousel building remains fenced off. Here is a look at what Morris Cove almost lost, and what it is working to bring back.

An amusement park by the sea

A century ago, the East Shore was a summer playground. When the electric trolley connected Morris Cove directly to downtown in 1902, the neighborhood was known as the “Newport of Connecticut,” Jason Bischoff-Wurstle, director of photo archives at the New Haven Museum, wrote in a 2020 history of the park.

In 1904, the Lighthouse Point Improvement Company bought the old lighthouse and 75 surrounding acres and built an amusement park, with a midway, a carousel, a boardwalk, bath houses and shaded picnic groves. Crowds came to see the New Haven Colonials baseball team, and Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth squared off on the Lighthouse Point ballfield weeks after Ruth’s Boston Red Sox won the 1916 World Series, according to the museum.

The carousel and its building

The carousel building that stands today went up in 1916, replacing an original 1905 building, according to the carousel’s 1983 nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in the Renaissance Revival style under the direction of Thomas Shanley, a New York restaurateur and head of the East Shore Amusement Company, the park’s original developer.

The carousel was run by Timothy Murphy, who had learned the trade from Charles Looff, one of the major carousel makers of the era. Its figures are attributed to Looff, Murphy and Charles Carmel of Brooklyn, the nomination says.

The nomination counts one camel, two chariots shaped like dragons and 69 horses, 40 of them galloping and 29 standing. The outer rim, or rounding board, is unusual: it is decorated with 20 oil paintings of New Haven harbor and nearby places.

Hard times, and the neighbors who saved it

The New Haven Parks Commission bought the amusement park in 1925, according to the National Register nomination. The Great Depression and the hurricane of 1938 hit the East Shore hard, and in 1957 every remaining amusement building except the carousel was torn down, the museum wrote.

In 1977, the carousel itself was shut and boarded up. By the early 1980s, the park had fallen into disrepair. A volunteer group, the Friends of the Lighthouse Park Carousel, raised money to restore it, and the carousel reopened on May 19, 1984, according to the museum. Donations paid to rehabilitate all of its horses.

The lighthouse next door

The park takes its name from Five Mile Point Light, the octagonal brownstone tower near the water. The first lighthouse on the point was completed in 1805, according to the lighthouse’s National Register nomination. The present tower, about 80 feet tall, was placed in service in 1845, built by Marcus Bassett with stone from Jabez Potter’s quarry in East Haven. The brick keeper’s house beside it dates to the War of 1812 era.

The light went dark in 1877, when the Southwest Ledge Lighthouse on the harbor breakwater took over. The property stayed in federal hands until the city acquired it in 1924 for Lighthouse Point Park, the nomination says.

What happens next

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said the carousel building has been stabilized but is off-limits, and the city is working on a plan to preserve it while talking with its insurance carrier about what the policy covers, the Independent reported. Twenty-seven special events, including 11 weddings, had to be moved.

Cleanup costs will not reach the threshold for federal reimbursement, city officials said, and will be covered by a mix of city, state, bonding and donated money. City officials told WSHU they would begin working with the public in the coming weeks on what comes next for the park.

Tree Warden Annie Mixsell summed up the change. “The landscape is very changed here,” she told the Independent. “We lost a tremendous amount of trees.” The city is working on a replanting plan.

The city’s park page lists a donation link for the restoration through the Foundation for New Haven Parks, at givegreater.cfgnh.org.

Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Versageek, CC BY-SA 3.0 (carousel, horse, rounding board); Jerrye and Roy Klotz MD, CC BY-SA 3.0 (1970 building); Christian David, CC BY-SA 4.0 (lighthouse and skyline); Charles Barneby, public domain (lighthouse).

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