Carousel Recalls Montco Mall As Amusement Park: Phun Philly Phacts

Editor's Note: This series runs every other week.

EASTERN MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA —The Willow Grove Park Mall is one of the most popular shopping centers in the Philadelphia region —and one of the most successful.

The mall in Abington Township on the Willow Grove border off Welsh Road is the second most profitable in the Philadelphia region behind the King of Prussia Mall.

It is also a mall that has an interesting amusement activity —a carousel.

The carousel is a centerpiece of the mall. But there is a reason for that. This mall was once an amusement park.

It's not the Willow Grove Mall. It's the Willow Grove Park Mall.

Willow Grove Park operated on the site of the current mall for 80 years from 1896 to 1975.

One of the biggest attractions in the park was the music pavilion, at which John Philip Sousa and his band played several times between 1901 and 1926. The pavilion was demolished in March 1959.

The amusement park found its way into popular culture too:

• The carnival scenes for Abbott and Costello's final film together, Dance with Me, Henry, were filmed at the park in 1956.
• Bill Cosby wrote and performed a stand-up routine called "Roland and the Rollercoaster", describing a childhood ride on the roller coaster at Willow Grove Park.
• In season one, episode three (“New Frontier”) of the 2002 television show American Dreams, Willow Grove Park was mentioned, along with one of its roller coasters, by Helen Pryor to Will at the end of the episode.

The park's closure was announced in April 1976, and it sat vacant for several years until the land was cleared for a large shopping mall known as Willow Grove Park Mall, which opened in August 1982.

The mall pays homage to its predecessor by displaying banners and other objects, harking back to its days as an amusement park.

And one of those tributes is the carousel.