Recalling Pastimes Of the Early 1900s

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

This carousel, shown in 1906, was an attraction in Valley GroveÂs picnic park, a summer destination that operated on Eatons Neck. The fate of the carousel is unknown. (Courtesy of Robert C. Bungarz)

ONCE THE CAROUSEL went 'round and 'round to merry music and the laughter of children. It was a popular attraction in entrepreneur Ben Mitchell's Valley Grove picnic park on Eatons Neck in 1906, when this photo was taken.

But around 1917, as America entered World War I and fewer steamboats brought picnickers from the city, the carousel was dismantled, according to Edward A.T. Carr's "Faded Laurels: the History of Eatons Neck and Asharoken" (Heart of the Lakes, 1994).

What happened to it?, asks Robert C. Bungarz of Northport, a member of the National Carousel Association.

His great-grandfather, Gottfried Bungarz, made carousels in his Brooklyn shop similar to the one on Eatons Neck and got a patent for up-and-down horses in the early 1900s (earlier carousel horses were stationary). Bungarz, 80, continues to ride carousels and to hope that someone will remember this one and provide a clue to who manufactured it. The carousel association raises funds to buy old carousels "so they won't be dismantled and the horses wind up in somebody's living room," Bungarz says.

Another popular pastime in Suffolk County in the early 1900s was visiting train wrecks and derail- ments, Ron Ziel and George Foster said in their Long Island Rail Road history, "Steel Rails to the Sunrise" (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965). The wreck shown here took place in Bay Shore around July 10, 1909, and appears to have been caused by a locomotive plowing into the back of another train, according to a hand-written note on the photographic plate.