Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainA 1916 National Historic Landmark on Santa Monica Pier where apartment tenants once heard the calliope playing in an empty building and a dark figure has been reported riding the horses after hours
200 Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica, CA 90401
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Small carousel ride fee. Pier access is free.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat pier deck. Carousel building is at the end of the pier. Accessible from the beachfront.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1916 · Built by Charles Looff, who built Coney Island's first carousel in 1876 · National Historic Landmark (1987) · California Historical Landmark · One of the few surviving early 20th-century carousel buildings on the West Coast
Charles I.D. Looff arrived at Santa Monica in 1911, already established as one of the premier carousel builders in the United States — his Coney Island carousel, built in 1876, is widely cited as the first permanent carousel in America. Looff purchased land at the base of the Santa Monica coast and developed what became known as Looff's Pier, commissioning the Hippodrome building and its hand-carved carousel as the centerpiece attraction.
The Hippodrome building itself — completed in 1916 — was designed to house and protect the carousel from ocean weather. The structure's distinctive onion-domed octagonal roof and decorative exterior made it one of the most photographed buildings on the California coast. The carousel inside featured horses and other animals carved in Looff's characteristic elaborate style, with painted decoration and brass fittings.
The building changed hands multiple times through the 20th century as the pier's ownership and commercial profile evolved. At various points in its history the upper level of the Hippodrome housed residential apartments — a feature documented in Britannica's 2009 account of the building's ghost stories, which notes that tenants in those apartments were among the early reporters of paranormal phenomena.
In 1987 the Looff Hippodrome was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service, recognizing both the building's architectural significance and its role in the history of American amusement park culture. The carousel continues to operate. The building is one of the few surviving examples of early 20th-century carousel architecture on the West Coast.
Sources
The Looff Hippodrome's paranormal reputation has a longer documented history than most California pier attractions. The Britannica blog account from 2009 — drawing on the building's history as a residence as well as an amusement — identifies two distinct categories of reported phenomena.
The first involves the calliope. Apartment tenants who lived in the upper-level units reported hearing the carousel's music playing in the building when no one was operating it — the calliope sounding in an empty building, at night, with the attraction closed. A calliope operating without a source is a specific and verifiable kind of claim: either something mechanical was activating the instrument, or the sound was hallucinated or mistaken. The accounts are consistent enough across sources to be worth noting.
The second involves a figure. Multiple accounts, drawn from different time periods, describe a dark shadowy male form seen on the Hippodrome's roof and, in some accounts, seated on the carousel horses after closing hours. The figure is not identified, connected to any specific documented death, or associated with any known person in the building's history. It appears and disappears.
US Ghost Adventures includes the Looff Hippodrome as a stop on its Santa Monica ghost tour. The combination of the building's age, its isolation at the end of a pier, the presence of former residential tenants who experienced the phenomena, and the visual strangeness of a historic carousel building at the edge of the ocean creates an unusually coherent setting for the accounts.
The 1916 Looff Hippodrome houses a hand-carved wooden carousel that remains in operation on Santa Monica Pier. The building is a California Historical Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Visitors can ride the carousel during operating hours. The building's exterior — the distinctive white carousel pavilion at the end of the pier — is visible from the beach and the pier approach.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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