I met the man who bought this carousel today. I was taking an afternoon walk outside my office in DUMBO, and spent a few minutes admiring Jane’s Carousel, which sits on the water in the Brooklyn Bridge Park and has amazing views of the bridge. It was the first thing I checked on after Hurricane Sandy (stunning photo here).
I was reading the plaque explaining the carousel’s history and how it came to be when the man standing next to me piped up, “What do you think?” “It’s stunning,” I said. He said, “That’s me!” As in the David Walentas mentioned on the plaque who, with his wife Jane, bought the 1922-constructed historic beauty at auction in 1984 and spent the next 20+ years restoring it to its original majesty before gifting it to Brooklyn and the neighborhood of DUMBO.
David also happens to be the founder and principal of Two Trees Management. His development company essentially built DUMBO and designed it to be the mix of cultural, digital and architectural diversity it is today (with a little help from the 500 digital agencies and companies now located here and a little company - my company - called Digital DUMBO).
It was very cool to chat with him about his wife’s process to restore the carousel. I was admiring it because my grandmother loves carousels and I wanted to take a picture of it for her. My grandfather made her carousels by hand for several years, but he never brought her one this big. :)




