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The 104-year-old carousel at Seaside Height's Casino Pier could be dismantled and its individual pieces sold off if a buyer does not step forward for the entire carousel.

(Star-Ledger file photo)

The elaborate hand-carved 1910 carousel gracing Casino Beach Pier in Seaside Heights survived Hurricane Sandy and the devastating fire of 2013, but it is at risk of being broken up and auctioned off piece by piece if a buyer does not step forward to save it.

"I've always viewed it, and I think hundreds of thousands of people view it as the soul of Seaside Heights," says Floyd Moreland, who helped return the carousel to its glory in the 1980s and was its caretaker for many years. "It's a magical machine."

Casino Pier will first attempt to auction off the entire carousel intact this fall via New York's Guernsey's. The pier management wants to add new attractions, and the carousel takes up a lot of room and requires significant maintenance, with replacement pieces hard to come by. But for those who want to indulge their nostalgia one last time, marketing manager Maria Mastoris says the ride will be open through the end of the season, and a retirement celebration is being planned.

The carousel, only one of three wooden carousels still open to the public in New Jersey, includes figures carved by famed crafters William Dentzel, Charles Looff, Charles Carmel and Marcus Illions. The latter three were experts in the what was known as the Coney Island style, with animated poses, luxuriant manes, and elaborate, often jeweled ornamentation, while Dentzel's Philadelphia-style horses were more realistic, looking "as if they could take an apple right out of your hand," according to an article in the New England Antiques Journal.

The historic carousel at Seaside Heights' Casino Pier is being auctioned off.

When the Seaside Heights carousel had fallen into disrepair in the 1980s, retired college professor Moreland took it under his wing, repainting and repairing the carousel's Wurlitzer organ and taking over management of the ride until about five years ago. The carousel has 58 hand-carved figures, including two camels, a lion and a tiger, and two chariots. Figures of similar vintage, when sold off, have fetched six figures, and Moreland says that generally carousels have been worth more in pieces than intact.

When it comes up for auction, Moreland won't be there. "I tend to be very emotional, and that carousel and me are almost one."

The carousel, which came to Seaside Heights in 1932 after being partially destroyed in a fire at its previous location, Island Beach Park in Burlington County, has since been named in Moreland's honor, and he told The Star-Ledger in 2000 that he first rode it while vacationing with his family in the 1940s, and during college, he would return to help with its upkeep. "I was entranced with this carousel. Right from the start, it was what I always wanted to do in life. The best job in the world."

The carousel has been the backdrop for political figures, including then-U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley in 1988, as well as pop cultural ones, with the entire cast of "Jersey Shore" draping themselves over the figures for a photo shoot in advance of the show's third season.

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