Jantzen Beach Carousel - MPF ConservationMPF Conservation

MPF Conservation assessed the Jantzen Beach Carousel in 2018, and subsequently treated two horses and several decorative objects from the carousel. This page is the overview of the entire project.

Jantzen Beach Carousel is not quite an institution, but as a cultural landmark beloved by the community, we decided to place it here. It is under new ownership and we hope to see it running sometime soon.

Background on Damages

When we were introduced to the project, the storage facility that housed the carousel suffered a major roof failure in the winter season, causing a deluge of rain water, snow and dissolved construction materials to wash down upon the carousel parts, dumping water, dirt and debris everywhere, shown left and below.

This caused further damage to the already badly distressed and weathered painted carousel parts.

Note: Some images have white spots in them; this is debris flying as we moved items.

The parts were arrange by those who previously disassembled and stored the beloved historic carousel in what could be described as an organized mess. Some effort had been made to care for the parts but there was not enough protection, and the parts were put away covered with grease. Grease left on wooden painted objects can exacerbate degradation, as it works its way under the finish and into the body of the object.

Our crew, run by Adam Todd who owns Portland’s Best Movers (our movers of choice for all moves), cleaned and sorted the entire mess with us, taking several days.

Our goals were to:

Assess a sampling of all the decorative elements with an eye to an overall cost and possible plan toward restoration of the various parts: Carousel Horses, various shields/panels and rounding boards.
Bring several objects back to the studio for in-depth assessments with the possibility of treating some or all of the chosen items.
Offer a ball park estimate for the restoration of the carousel based upon our sample assessments and/or treatments, and multiplying this by the number of the total items.

The clean up and acquiring of parts!

We intended to assess two of each size horse: Extra Large, Large, Medium, and Small, however, once on site, it was determined to be potentially detrimental to the safety of the horses to find the sizes, so we chose from the two dozen horses easily accessible.

MPFC took more horses than necessary, as there was no way to secure the extra horses in stable positions within the storage facility during he next phase, when a mechanical assessment was performed on the condition of the big gears and electrical. Fifteen horses came with us for the first assessment; eight were to be fully assessed; we assessed ten, two more than required by contract, however, this insured the creation of a better average for the ultimate restoration costs of the whole.

In addition, the large double chariot above and right, the long lion chariot, and a sample of two of all the decorative objects (cherubs, rounding boards, etc.) were moved to the studio for assessment.

From mess, left, to order, right.

In the process of assessing the many parts of the carousel MPFC also cleaned and ordered the storage space, shown above, and also better protected the various parts both in the stacking and by covering the parts with large tarps, in case there was a further incident to the roof. This was outside the parameters of the contract.