Gabe Finkenstein and preservation crew at work. City Chief Structural Engineer Zach Shapiro and construction crews on Friday works to make the storm-damaged carousel building “vertically sound.” Four carved wooden “flying horses” lay on their sides Friday afternoon on a moving m at right next to Lighthouse Point Park’s 115-year-old carousel. They are part of a 70-odd figurine herd that is about to take a trip to an undisclosed storage site as the city works to preserve the carousel and figure out if the historic building that housed the ride can be saved after a brutal storm early Thursday morning. That storm damaged 60-80 trees, caused serious damage to the carousel building, and has indefinitely shuttered Lighthouse Park to the public. Somehow, the 70-ish horses, two chariots, and various other aesthetic pieces that make up the 1911-built carousel appear to have escaped relatively unscathed. Before all those horses can be moved into storage on Saturday, preservationist Gabe Finkenstein and his crew from WRF Designs on Friday needed to assess any damage, remove the figures from the ride, and meticulously organize and label them so that everything could go back to their rightful spots upon their eventual return to Morris Cove. “The ride in general looks like it’s in pretty decent shape,” Finkenstein said as two of his colleagues worked on removing one of the horses from its pole. He said he’s found “some minor damage on some of the figures.” The largest damage was to one horse’s mouth; “one of the carved pieces of tongue had broken off,” presumably because a piece of the building’s ceiling had fallen off and hit it. He also said that several of the horses “had pieces of glass sticking out of them.” Overall, though, the horses are in good shape — and will be taken away and put in storage on Saturday. Finkenstein recalled that he previously worked on a major restoration project to celebrate the carousel’s centennial. “It’s wonderful to have something this beautiful that’s lasted this long, cared about this much by the area.” For now, he stressed, his team’s top priority is labeling each figure to “make sure everything goes back exactly where it was.” A Parks staffer lays out pallets for horse transport. That tongue looks intact. Credit: Thomas Breen photos The beach-side view of the carousel building on Friday. One of the dozens of toppled trees in the park. Trees that were, by the park’s entrnance. The post “Flying Horses” Survive Storm appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less