Parkville Community Elementary School in Hartford and Griswold Middle School in Rocky Hill have already completed their fund-raising and have contributed 170,329 pennies, or $1,703.29.
The Barnard-Brown, Burr, Dwight, Fox, Fisher, Hooker and Kinsella elementary schools in Hartford are also participating in what the museum calls the ''Pennies for Ponies'' campaign and additional schools would be welcome, said Louise DeMars, the museum's executive director.
The three-year restoration project began last year when ''we stripped years and years of paint from the floor to reveal a beautiful, yellow pine finish,'' Ms. DeMars said.
Phase 2 will be devoted to painting and gold leafing the decorative parts of the carousel, the frames, scenic panels and a valance around the carousel's top at a cost of about $27,000. Twenty-three karat gold leaf has been donated by Alan Swift, a Hartford businessman.
Work on the carousel will be completed in 2005 when its horses and chariots will be repaired and repainted at a cost of $162,000. The three-row merry-go-round has 36 jumper horses -- the kind that go up and down -- 12 stander horses and two chariots that go around and around to the music of a Wurlitzer band organ.
Bushnell Park's carousel is one of 17 built early in the 20th century by two Russian-born immigrants, Solomon Stein and Harry Goldstein, owners of the Artistic Carousel Company of Brooklyn, N.Y. Only three of the 17 are in use today. They are in New York's Central Park, at the Knoebel's Groves Amusement Park in Elysburg, Pa., and in Bushnell Park, Ms. DeMars said.
'Ours is one of only four antique carousels in Connecticut,' she said. 'The others are at Sound View Beach in Old Lyme, Light House Park in New Haven and Lake Compounce in Bristol.'
She said a carousel is considered an antique if it dates back to the 1940's or earlier.
The carousel was purchased for the city by the Knox Foundation in Hartford in 1974 for $55,000. It had spent its first 36 years in Albany before being sold to an amusement park in Canton, Ohio in 1940.
About 90,000 children and adults pay 50 cents a ride on the carousel every year and it can be rented for parties and other special occasions that attract 10,000 additional riders. The carousel season runs from May 1 through mid-October.