The Casino and Carousel House at the South End

At the far southern end of the boardwalk, where Asbury Park meets Ocean Grove, stands a ghostly green rotunda. This is the Casino and Carousel House, built in nineteen twenty-nine and designed, like Convention Hall, by the Grand Central firm of Warren and Wetmore. The Carousel House is a round pavilion sheathed in copper that has oxidized to a soft parakeet green, its roof decorated with celestial and seaside ornament.

Inside, from nineteen thirty-two onward, spun a hand-carved merry-go-round, Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel number eighty-seven, which delighted riders for more than half a century. The carousel itself was sold in nineteen ninety and moved south to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, leaving the empty house behind. Beside it stood a small temple-like heating plant that fed steam through tunnels beneath the boardwalk to warm the seaside buildings, with bronze urns that vented the excess steam into the sky.

For years the Casino has stood as a beautiful, roofless shell, a favorite of photographers and film crews, used on and off as raw space for art and theater. It is a haunting reminder of how grand this walk once was, and how much of that grandeur is still standing, weathered but proud.