The glass pavilion at the south end of Yerba Buena Gardens holds a carousel built in 1906 by Charles I.D. Looff, the carver who made Coney Island’s first carousel. Its menagerie of hand-carved horses, camels, rams, and a giraffe spun for decades at Playland-at-the-Beach, the ocean-side amusement park that closed in 1972. After years away from the city, the carousel came back and reopened here in 1998.
It is named for LeRoy King, the longshoreman, union official, and civil rights leader who served decades on the city’s redevelopment commission and pushed to bring the carousel home. Rides cost a few dollars and it runs daily alongside the Children’s Creativity Museum.
If you rode it as a kid at Playland, it’s the same machine. If you didn’t, it’s a working piece of the city’s lost amusement park.
