HAT little old Brooklyn carousel maker creating the merry-go-round for Bryant Park is neither especially little, at 5-foot-11, nor noticeably old, despite his 68 years. But it cannot be denied that Marvin Sylvor has a talent for combining a passion for art with a canny instinct for the pragmatic.

Flash backward to Schofield Barracks in Oahu, Hawaii, where Private Sylvor, 22, who had zero aptitude for marching, trench-digging and tent-peg-hammering, was at attention with the rest of his Army company when an astonishing thing happened. A lieutenant barked: "I'm looking for an artist. Is anyone here an artist?"

Private after private stepped forward, leaping at the possibility of a cushy, mudless assignment far from heatstroke and unpeeled potatoes. But one after the other, all were rejected, because the lieutenant kept asking, "Do you have your brushes?" They all answered no.

But when the lieutenant reached Private Sylvor, his response to the brush query was a crisp, "Yes, sir!" The officer looked him over and gave the order: "Good! Follow me!"

He explained, "If you're a baseball star you travel with your mitt, if you're a track star you travel with your cleats, and if you have your brushes you must be a good artist."

In truth, Private Sylvor, an utterly untrained artist, had no brushes. "But I immediately went AWOL to Woolworth's to buy some brushes," he said, "and I got the job."

His assignment was to decorate an officers' club for a party. He quickly wangled a way to become a supervisor with an assistant, a fellow named Joe Weishar, who happened to be a gifted artist "who taught me everything about painting, and art in general," Mr. Sylvor said.

The work was successful enough to lead to a series of Army painting and decorating jobs that kept him spud-free until his hitch was up. Then Mr. Weishar encouraged Mr. Sylvor to obtain an art degree at Pratt Institute, which he did, in 1958.

At school he loved architecture and design. "But I thought I could hire more talented designers than myself, so I became their director," he said of the window-display and decorating business he founded.

CLIENTS came quickly: Henri Bendel, Burlington Mills and the Vatican Pavilion of the 1964 World's Fair. ("We did nearly everything aside from the "Pietà. Michelangelo did that.") Later, there were discos like Studio 54. A couple of businesses and a bankruptcy later, he was creating store displays for Bloomingdale's, Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Along the way, a marriage ended sadly in divorce but happily with two children. (Amy, 32, is a psychologist in Miami, and Chris, 28, a writer in New York.)

Also important: in his 30's, Mr. Sylvor joined the National Carousel Association, attending conventions from hither to thither and yon.

He loved merry-go-rounds "because they touch some spiritual part of your soul somewhere," he said.

"They make you smile."

So when in the early 80's a client at Herald Center asked Mr. Sylvor if he could build a carousel, he said "Yes!" as if he were back at Schofield. Then he hired a couple of little old carousel makers to help.

That merry-go-round was such a success that it led to the construction of more and more, in an endeavor that ultimately extinguished the rest of his design business.

So, in the last two decades, Mr. Sylvor's company, Fabricon, has created 61 carousels that are now making merry in the Riverbank State Park in Manhattan; in La Paz, Bolivia; São Paulo, Brazil; Auckland, New Zealand; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Singapore.

Now flash forward to 2002, in a two-story former factory in the East New York section of Brooklyn. Mr. Sylvor is making a carousel, replete with galloping steeds with flying manes. There are sparkling mirrors and glimmering gold trappings, as well as an intricate floral design befitting the town square that is Bryant Park. To be installed in late May, the new Victorian carousel weighs 12,000 pounds and is 22 feet in diameter.

A child of the Bronx who grew up at 165th Street and Jerome Avenue, near Yankee Stadium, Mr. Sylvor was one of two sons of Clara, a homemaker, and Leo, a sign painter, "who was a good letterer, at least," he said.

"I guess the art was in the genes."

Mr. Sylvor says all humans remember the first time they rode a carousel as a child, but he can't forget he was forbidden to ride one.

"Every summer we would go to Rockaway and pass a carousel near the Marine Park Bridge, and every summer I would ask to ride the carousel, and every summer my father would refuse to stop, and would say something typically kind and gentle to me like, `Shut up,' " he recalled. "He was a man on a mission to get to the Rockaways."

So where, Mr. Sylvor, are the superior carousels in New York, aside from his, of course?

"The Central Park Carousel is so big and powerful and beautiful," he said. "But the one in Rye Playland, it's just the most exquisite. If it didn't exist and you dreamed it up, you would say, `That is what a carousel should look like.' "