The Merry-Go-Round Kings

Murmuring voices and laughter, mingling with the strains of band organ music and the rustling of long white skirts and crisply starched shirts, filled the sum­mer air of 1904 at Philadel­phia’s Woodside Park. A new carousel, one of the finest in America, had just introduced a kaleidoscope of festive color and design to the familiar old amusement grounds. It was, especially, the onset of...
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Currents

A Glass Act By the opening of the twentieth century, western Pennsylvania, with twenty-nine companies in full production, had emerged as the undisputed glass manufacturing capital of the United States (see “Currents,” Spring 1998, and “Curator’s Choice,” Summer 1998). The manufacture of glass in the region can be traced to the late eighteenth century, when both the...
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