Upon accepting the gift of the Empire State Carousel, the Farmers' Museum gave Altonview just six months to design the $950,000 pavilion and supervise construction. "It was an incredibly tight deadline," Ofer recalls. "I said, 'You want what, where, by when? Okay, here we go!'" For precedents, Holzman provided numerous vintage images, and Ofer also studied surviving old carousels in New York City's Bryant Park and Central Park (the architect's children very happily provided research assistance by riding around and around).
To suit the Cooperstown lot, Ofer says, "We knew we wanted a traditional polygonal shape, but the exact proportions were very tricky to get right. It had to be big enough to accommodate a buffer circulation zone around the carousel, but it couldn't be so big that it overwhelmed the site. And it couldn't look too light-hearted, either, in the midst of those authentic, weathered old farm buildings." The architects also had to engineer the structure for year-round use and provide climate control to protect the carvings.
In close collaboration with Siracusa, Altonview wrapped a subdued palette of traditional materials around a pre-engineered steel frame. Painted wooden pilasters separate arched, 15-lite cedar doors (from Hahn's Woodworking in Branchburg, NJ). Window sash with 12 lites ring the clerestory. Cedar shingles wrap a gabled rear wing for bathrooms and mechanicals. In the winter, radiant-heating pipes warm the brick floors. In the summer, the doors roll up at the touch of a button into slots amid sprinkler pipes overhead. When the doors are open, Ofer says, "they tuck one above the other like petals, with a tight one-inch clearance in between."
In spring 2006, the museum purchased a used tractor-trailer bed for hauling the carousel northward. The museum construction crew finished the pavilion in time "everyone was so excited about the project, they really pulled together to get it done," Siracusa says. Since it opened, head counts of visitors and members have risen, and the demographics are skewing younger. "It's having a long-term positive effect on the museum," he says.
One frequent guest is Holzman, who's delighted with the Altonview building. "It evokes the past and perfectly fits the essence of the carousel," he says. "After 23 years, there's been a happy ending to this amazing saga. Sometimes I just sit and watch the children all over the carousel, and the adults on it smiling and feeling a little younger. In one of the murals we painted a folk saying: 'Every time you ride a carousel, one more day on earth you will dwell."