The Carousel from Glenn Echo

So it happens: you are looking for one thing and you come on unexpected stuff. Sometimes it sucks (so to speak), some other times it's amazing. Well, I found the amazing stuff this time.



The one thing I was looking for were the traces of the old trolley line that had been linking to DC the neighboring communities on the Maryland side of Potomac: line 20, starting from the Union Station, passing on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House, then some streets in Georgetown, then following the border of Potomac through the Palisades and Brookmont, passing near the Sycamore Store and the Mohican Hills, going on further through Glenn Echo up to Cabin John Bridge. Now this is old history and the traces remained only here and there. The route was following loosely the Potomac Avenue, a street that appears and vanishes any given five hundred feet. Old history: the trolley was for commuters, and everybody commutes now by car.

So, to make it short, the one trolley station that remained, as kind of museum, with a trolley car staying on a short segment of trackage, just in remembrance, is in front of Glenn Echo Park. Only this Glenn Echo Park has a history of its own.

The trolley was transporting the commuters: that was fine for weekdays, but weekends were commuter-free. The car company found the solution: an amusement park was created at the end of the trolley line, to attract visitors on weekends: Glenn Echo was a trolley park.

It is much to say about Glenn Echo Park history, but let's stick now only to its Merry-Go-Round. It is not any kind of merry-go-round, it's a Dentzel Carousel: the German Gustav Dentzel immigrated some time in the 1860's and founded a carousel manufacture in Philadelphia. It was a family craft: his father had built such marvels in Germany, the son was following the tradition. William Dentzel, the son of Gustav, carried on the business: the Glenn Echo Carousel was built at the end of the 1920's: a fantastic orgy of wooden carved horses, tigers, lions, giraffes, ostriches, rabbits, deers, and of course chariots, all bathed in thousand and one lights sparkling in all kind of mirrors and painted panels; and then the Wurlitzer Band Organ, wow! And the kids, riding this menagerie, and their grandpas and grandmas watching them and dreaming the dream near the little ones: man, it's gorgeous!




(click here for the Romanian version)

(Looking for the Old Trolley)