Amusing the Zillion

Kiddie Wheel Being Taken Down, McCullough’s Kiddie Park, Coney Island. October 15, 2012. Photo © me-myself-i/Tricia Vita via flickr

On Monday, workers at McCullough’s Kiddie Park at the corner of West 12th Street and the Bowery in Coney Island began dismantling the little yellow wheel and the Herschell carousel under the gaze of the Bumblebees. As ATZ reported last month, the park’s lease with property owner Thor Equities ended this year (Exclusive: McCullough’s Kiddie Park Closing After 50 Years in Coney Island, ATZ, September 4, 2012). Since the parties could not agree to terms of a lease renewal, Jimmy McCullough, who is Coney’s oldest ride operator, is closing his family’s last remaining business here.

“Jimmy McCullough and the McCullough family would like to thank our customers for generations and decades, and all of our business associates in Coney Island,” said his daughter Carol McCullough in an interview with ATZ in September. The McCullough family has operated amusements here for four generations and is related to the Tilyous of Steeplechase Park. In the 1950s, they had Kiddielands at Surf Avenue and 15th Street as well as Surf Avenue and 8th Street next to the Cyclone. The Kiddie Park at 12th Street has been in operation since the 1960s and had ten kiddie rides after a sublease expired on an adjacent property also owned by Thor Equities.

The McCullough family’s lasting legacy is the three historic wooden carousels that they once operated in Coney Island. The rides remain in New York City’s parks: the Prospect Park Carousel, the Flushing Meadows Carousel, and the B&B Carousell, which will reopen in Coney Island’s new Steeplechase Plaza in 2013.

Aerial View of McCullough’s Kiddie Park. October 14, 2012. Photo © me-myself-i/Tricia Vita via flickr