The Palace Amusements in Asbury Park featured a ferris wheel which is believed to be the oldest in the world.
By MICHELLE GLADDEN
A renewed push to refurbish one of Asbury Park’s rarest artifacts – its Ferris Wheel – kicks off this month, according to the Pennsylvania team behind the project.
The Asbury Park Ferris Wheel operated from 1895 to 1988 as part of the Palace Amusements on Lake Avenue according to Barbara Cohen, president of the Schuylkill River Heritage Center in Phoenixville, Pa. It is the oldest Ferris Wheel in the world. The Palace Amusements building was torn down in 2004.
The restoration of the Ferris Wheel is not centered on bringing it back to the Jersey Shore, it does entail refurbishing the structure as an art installation on the very land where it was created – the Phoenix Iron Company Foundry, built in 1882, and now home to the Schuylkill River Heritage Center.
“It will not be operational but it will be an outdoor sculpture,” Cohen said. “To restore it to working condition would cost close to $3 million and we could not have that liability for the borough. It is much safer as sculpture.”
Dubbed the Phoenix Wheel Community Betterment Project, the restoration funding need is now at an estimated $750,000 to $1 million.
“We will know more after our April 15 meeting,” Cohen said.
That is when a detailed report on funding needs moving forward is expected to be revealed, Cohen explained. Engineer Tom Ziegler, with the help of borough engineer Owen Hime, spent the past year reverse-engineering the wheel to determine the project’s funding needs moving forward.
The long and winding road of the Asbury Park Ferris Wheel’s journey back to where it was created began with an undisclosed sale price to a buyer in Biloxi, MS, according to palaceamusements.com. There, it carried passengers at a 140-acre water park and campground from 1990-7, when the park closed.
Along with the operating mechanism of the Palace carousel, the wheel was purchased and returned to NJ developer William Sitar, as part of a plan to acquire and refurbish the Palace. While Sitar’s plans did not materialize, the Iselin-based developer sold the wheel to the Schuylkill River Heritage Center and, in 2008, the Phoenixville Federal Bank and Trust funded the cost of moving the wheel from Asbury Park to Phoenixville. And, while the 16 baskets have been fully restored, the focus now turns to the Ferris Wheel.
For more information, visit phoenixvillefoundry.org
