Paragon Park, Nantasket's 'mammoth circle of fun,' lives on in a 1928 carousel in Hull

HULL, Mass. In the summer of 1917, a day at the shore from Boston could start at Rowe's Wharf, where a steamer left every hour at 20 minutes past, from 9:20 in the morning until 9:20 at night, for the sail down the harbor to Nantasket Beach. The 1917 edition of the guidebook that printed that timetable, "Trolley Trips Through New England," carried an advertisement for what waited at the other end, Paragon Park, "A MAMMOTH CIRCLE OF FUN," with an "Immense Railway, largest ever built," a palm garden, dancing, and a lagoon "with brilliant electric display."

For 80 summers, from 1905 through 1984, Paragon Park was where families from Boston and the South Shore went to ride the roller coaster, bang around in the bumper cars and stroll the grounds under the park's electric lights. One piece of it is still turning on Nantasket Avenue in Hull.

A gate by the sea

The park was the work of George A. Dodge, and the Paragon Park Museum in Hull, which tells its story, calls him a visionary. A Detroit Publishing Co. photograph from that first year, now in the Library of Congress, shows the way in: a gateway with a tall pointed tower and smaller turrets, flags flying from its peaks, "PARAGON PARK" lettered over a garlanded arch, trolley rails running through the dirt street out front, and a few visitors in hats near the gate.

A catalog note at Historic New England, written for an aerial postcard of the grounds, says the park was created as part of a "New England World's Fair," covered 20 acres and was lit by 100,000 electric lights, with exhibition halls, a roller coaster, other rides and its own way down to the beach. A stereograph in the same collection shows Paragon at night with every building lit and the buildings reflected in the water in front of it. The Library of Congress also holds a Detroit Publishing view of a roller coaster at the park from about 1905, a dozen years before the ride most people remember.

The Giant

That ride came in 1917, after Dodge hired the Philadelphia Toboggan Company in 1916 to build a new coaster, and the Giant, designed by John A. Miller with Herbert P. Schmeck as construction foreman, opened on May 26, 1917, according to a 2025 Boston.com history of the ride. Schmeck came back in 1932 and refitted it with underfriction track, which turned a scenic ride into a thrill ride, and a fire at the park in 1963 took its helix finale. Boston.com recalled that The Boston Globe once likened the wooden coaster rising over the coast to a "bleached dinosaur skeleton."

The coaster was part of the skyline for anyone who grew up near it. The Boston Public Library keeps a mid-century photograph by Warren Favor that carries the title "Seaside houses, with view of the Giant Coaster at Paragon Park," and a 1968 picture at UMass Boston's Healey Library carries its contributor's note: "Picture taken while standing in the front car." Christopher Haraden, a local historian who grew up visiting his grandparents next to the park, and whose grandfather helped keep the coaster running, told Boston.com the park was "like coming upon paradise." He sits on the carousel's advisory committee today.

Mermaids, daredevils and a palm garden

The negatives of photographer Leslie Jones, kept by the Boston Public Library, catch the park in its showman days: a "real live 'mermaid'" and the Paragon Park "bathing girls" in 1917, and a crowd gathered to watch the Fearless Greggs perform "their leapfrogging auto show" sometime in the years after. Another photographer in the library's collections, Leon Abdalian, photographed the palm garden at Nantasket Beach on Aug. 8, 1920.

By 1921, the vacation guide "Train and Trolley Trips Through New England" called Nantasket "a palatial playground, with Paragon Park, Palm Garden, and a wealth of amusements," and the boat ride down the harbor "Boston's favorite afternoon sail: one hour." Later postcards sold the drive, too, and a Tichnor Brothers card from the 1930s or '40s promised "an hour's drive along its mellow storied South Shore," while a library photograph from 1953 carries the plain title "Crowded parking lot at Nantasket Beach."

The last summers

Photographers kept coming back for the rest of the park's life. Spencer Grant, whose negatives are also at the Boston Public Library, photographed a newer coaster called the Galaxi in 1971 and returned for the bumper cars and spinning rides in 1974. In March 1984, Globe photographer Stan Grossfeld caught two Hull schoolgirls passing the old coaster on their way home from school, in what turned out to be the park's last spring.

Paragon Park closed in September 1984, Boston.com reported, and its rides went to auction, the Giant among them. Wild World in Maryland bought the Giant for $28,000, rebuilt it with a new helix finale and opened it on May 3, 1986, as the Wild One. Opening-day riders told the Globe, in a story Boston.com recounted, that the lift in the rear seat gave "you the feeling that you're about to be hurled up to Baltimore." Where the park stood there are condominiums now. "Now, the view is old condominium buildings, but it was a landmark," Haraden said.

The carousel that stayed

The carousel never left Hull, and today it is the last attraction left from the park. Built in 1928 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, its No. 85, it was bought at auction in 1985 by new owners who saw it needed "a full and period-appropriate restoration," and the nonprofit Friends of the Paragon Carousel run it now at 205 Nantasket Ave. It carries 66 carved wooden horses, two Roman chariots, 36 cherubs, 18 goddesses and 35 original paintings, and it turns to the music of a Wurlitzer band organ. The Friends count it among fewer than 100 grand carousels left in the United States.

Restoration curator James Hardison takes the horses down with a heat gun, through layer after layer of "park paint," to the colors they wore in 1928, often chestnut and dapple gray, then sands them to the original basswood and paints them again by hand with brushes in traditional "Japan Colors." More than half of the 66 horses have been restored so far. Next door, in the Clock Tower building, the Paragon Park Museum shows the postcards, photographs and souvenirs that families bring in, each displayed with the donor's name, and it opens from noon to 3 p.m. on most days from mid-June through Labor Day and on spring and fall weekends for a suggested $2 donation. The carousel and museum run on donations and grants, and the Friends invite people to give, adopt a carousel horse or dedicate a brick.

The carousel closed for the season this fall with a note on its website that it is "already looking forward to our 99th!" It plans to open again in the spring of 2027, and a single ride cost $3 this season. The horses are resting for the winter now, and the Giant and the lagoon lights are long gone, but when the doors open next spring someone will start the Wurlitzer band organ again, and a child will climb onto a painted horse that has been carrying children since 1928, round and round, a few steps from Nantasket Beach.

Label: Reported by us.