Sutton Place Park and Porcellino, copy of a copy of a copy.

Sutton Place Park

Sutton Place is one of  the most upscale neighborhood in all of Manhattan.  It covers a small area stretching only blocks from 53rd Street to 59th Street, between the East River to Second Avenue right by the Queensboro Bridge.  In the 1870s, a real estate developer named E.B. Sutton constructed townhouses on Avenue A, a street later renamed for him.

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo(1983 to 1994)  and his son-in-law designer Kenneth Cole live there now.  Aristotle Onassis, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Bill Blass,   Marilyn Monroe and her then husband Arthur Miller lived there.  Sutton Place has two public parks overlooking the East River, one at the end of 57th Street and the other at the end of 53rd Street.  

These parks are the perfect spot to watch the sun set and to escape the hustle of life in New York City. The park at the end of 57th street and its vistas of the Queensboro Bridge were featured prominently in Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979).   There is a Boar Statue sitting in the middle of the park.    Philanthropist Hugh Trumbull Adams found the statue in a Florentine shop and donated it to the park in 1972.   

Porcellino statue in Florence, Italy 

It's a bronze copy of the  statue made by Italian sculpture of Pietro Tacca around 1620,  that stands in    the heart of the historic center of  Florence, Italy  in the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo, or  New Market.  

Original statue in Ufizzi Gallery,
Florence

The Porcellino fountain (fountain of the piglet) is one the most popular monuments in Florence.  If you want a good luck you should touch the nose of the statue: the nose is shiny from the daily rubbing of hundreds of hands.  The statue in Florence is a copy  of a marble replica of a Renaissance statue of a wild boar.
The original boar was carved from marble during the centuries BC by a Greek sculptor. This sculpture was either lost or destroyed.  During the 17th century the Italians made a marble copy 'Cinghiale' housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Tacca had copied this  marble statue. So the statue in Sutton Place park, New York is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy! 

Porcellino Statue in Sydney, Australia

Six Flags replica

In 1962, five copies of Tacca's sculpture were cast by the Florence foundry, Fonderia Ferdinando Marinelli,  for public display.  One of the copies in  Sydney, Auastralia outside the Sydney Hospital. The wild boar even has special outfits which he wears on special occasions to help raise money for the hospital. 
There are   Porcellino Copies everywhere all over the world- in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany. There are nine copies of the statue in US. New York state has two of them -- the first one at Sutton Place park and the second one- near the entrance to Six Flags Great Escape amusement park Queensbury, NY.

The Statue of Liberty and its replicas. Part 2

Replica of the statue
 in Paris near Seine

The Statue of Liberty was created in 1886 by the French sculptor Bartholdi It was  presented as a gift from France to the United States. It  is now one of the most popular images in the world.  You can find more about the statue in one of my posts.
 

Hundreds of smaller replicas of the Statue of Liberty have been created worldwide. There are two statues in Paris, France. One, in the Jardin du Luxembourg, is a bronze model used by Bartholdi as part of the preparatory work for the New York statue. The artist offered it to the Luxembourg museum in 1900. The date written on this statue’s tablet (where the New York statue has “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI”)  is “15 de novembre 1889″ (November 15, 1889), the date at which the New York  statue  was inaugurated.

This second Statue of Liberty in Paris is   on   a man-made island in the river Seine. Its tablet bears two dates: “IV JUILLET 1776″ (July 4, 1776: the United States Declaration of Independence) like the New York statue, and “XIV JUILLET 1789″ (July 14, 1789: the storming of the Bastille).

The full size  gold-leaf-covered replica of the new flame at the upper end of the torch carried in the hand of the Statue of Liberty is located near   the intersection of l'Avenue de New-York (New York Avenue) and the Place de l'Alma near one of the numerous bridges across Sienna in Paris.  It was offered to the city of Paris in 1989 by the International Herald Tribune on behalf of donors who had contributed approximately $400,000 for its fabrication. The flame became an unofficial memorial for Diana, Princess of Wales after her 1997 death in the tunnel beneath the Pont de l'Alma.

There are replicas of the statue in Germany, Norway, Spain, United Kingdom ,Argentina ,Brazil, China, Israel, Japan.  

You can find a lot  of small replicas of the statue standing near the souvenir shops in New York.  Walking along the Broadway near the Times Square I saw three   Lady Liberties characters less than a block apart.

Replica of Lady Liberty  in Brooklyn

The oldest New York replica, 55 feet tall, dates back  to the very beginning of the 20th century. A French   architect William H. Flatteau built the building,  Liberty Warehouse, at 43 West 64th in 1891. The architect  wanted a replica of the statue to adorn the new building. The statue was cast in   Ohio in about 1900 and  shipped into NYC on a flatbed car after being sliced in half. 

When erected the statue had a spiral staircase that allowed visitors to climb up to the top to get a  view.

 In 2002  Liberty Warehouse was converted into luxury condos  and four floors were added to the 8-story building. The statue was relocated to Brooklyn and was placed on the parking lot at the back of Brooklyn Museum of Art. I   found it while walking in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden garden.

Charging bull

December 1989 was one of the coldest months on record. It was very cold  dark on the early morning of December 15  1989  when the sculpture Arturo Di Modica and his friends  installed the huge 7,100 lb (  3,200-kilogram)   bronze sculpture in front of New York Stock Exchange. The night before  Arturo  visited the location and  check the   police patrol time intervals.   He had a little bit more than 4 minutes to drop the statue.

 When the artist and his crew arrive next morning they saw a Christmas tree installed on the place they chose for the bull.  So  they decided to place the statue on the yellow center line of Broad Street, outside the exchange, facing Wall Street right under the tree, as a  Christmas present. 

The New York Times wrote :
"Daylight brought crowds, and hundreds stopped to admire and analyze the bull, which was charging under the branches of a 60-foot Christmas tree, also set in the middle of Broad Street. Mr. Di Modica handed out copies of ''The Bull,'' a paean-in-a-flier to his work. ...Security officials at the exchange were calling the police. ''In effect, they told us there was a very large statue of a bull there, and it wasn't there yesterday, and to the best of their knowledge shouldn't be there,'' said Officer Joseph Gallagher, a police spokesman."

The pamphlet  attached  to  the bull, started, "The Stock Market crash of 1987 was for many Americans an event frightening ..."  The artist    saw the bull , symbol of virility and courage,  as the perfect antidote to the Wall Street crash of 1986.   Bull markets are characterized by optimism, investor confidence and expectations that strong results will continue.



Bull and bear near Frankfurt bursa

According to Investopedia, "The terms "bear" and "bull" are thought to derive from the way in which each animal attacks its opponents. That is, a bull will thrust its horns up into the air, while a bear will swipe down. These actions were then related metaphorically to the movement of a market: if the trend was up, it was considered a bull market; if the trend was down, it was a bear market."

The statue was installed without permit. While the police were deciding what to do with the bull,   the exchange hired a trucking 
company to move the bull away. 
It was a bad day for Stock Exchange-  the price of the removal was $5000 and the Dow Jones index was down 14 points.

The bull was saved by the senior office of NYC parks department who called  Bowling Green association and suggested them to put the bull on the Bowling Green.

Arturo Di Modica was born in Sicilia, Italy in 1941 and move to Florence  in  1960 where he  opened his first studio. In 1973 the artist moved to New York and  rent a  studio in SoHo on Grand Street. Later he built   his own studio  on Crosby Street where he had been working for   the  world-famous Charging Bull for over two years. The "Charging Bull"  was the third - and at last successful -  attempt of the artist  install his own statues on New York streets without permit.  In 1977  he dropped several marble statues in front of Rockefeller Center . The second time, in February 1986, he put  a big bronze horse in front of Lincoln Center. "It was a Valentine's gift to all the people in New York who are in love," he said.  

In 1999 Arturo DiModica was selected for one of the most prestigious annual awards given in the United States the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

On the 15-year anniversary of its arrival on Wall Street, the "Charging Bull"  Arturo DiModica put the statue for sell.  The work cost US$360,000 of the artist's own money. The buyer must donate the bull to New York City with the condition that it remains at its location in Bowling Green park. The new owner's name will be placed on a permanent fixture created by Di Modica that will sit next to the sculpture. 
In May 2010 Di Modica installed similar version of the Charging Bull in Shanghai. 

Bund Bull in Shanghai

WIKI said: "It is located in the Bund, which is considered to be a location that symbolizes the era of European colonial capitalism in China   The bull is located in a square with four stock price screens across the river from the city's financial district.  The newly opened square is being called Bund Financial Square. Like its Wall Street counterpart, the Bund Bull's male genitalia is rumored to produce good luck when stroked."

Di Modica created the smaller, silver version of the bull  that sits outside his friend Giuseppi Cipriani's Abu Dhabi restaurant, Cipriani Yas Island.

The artist spent several  days in the Emirates in March 2012, negotiating for possible locations in Abu Dhabi or Dubai for the bigger version.

"If I could site a bull in the Emirates, the triangle for peace in the world will be complete," Di Modica. "I tell people; the bull is not fighting - it represents a stronger economy and consequently a better world for young people in the future."

The Cipriani’s are collectors of Arturo’s artwork, and even gotten the artist to design two of their restaurants:   Cipriani Dolci at Grand Central Terminal and Cipriani Downtown, both in New York.

The bull in Amsterdam

In July 2012 the artist placed a bronze statue of a bull,   similar to his work in New York , in front of NYSE Euronext (NYX)’ s Amsterdam bourse overnight as an antidote to Europe’s debt crisis.

“Europe is in an economic crisis. Think positive! Together we will go up!” read leaflets handed out at the square in front of the bourse by a spokesman for Di Modica.

Last year  in November Di Modica  signed an agreement with Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery in Stamford, Connecticut. Despite living in New York since 1971, Di Modica had never had gallery representation in the United States before. You can see now a  stainless steel 8-foot-by-4-foot replica of "Charging Bull"   alongside a stainless steel horse by di Modica on Bedford Street in Stamford.

"It's been there for almost 25 years and now it is the mascot of the world," di Modica said about the Charging Bull. "It was not legal but I'm not killing anybody or robbing a bank. I'm giving my love to the people. I give them more happiness."
There is a web camera installed near Charging bull- so you can see alwais see what is going on.

Balto the sled dog in Central Park

   There is a small statue of the dog in the Central Park, just west of East Drive and 67th Street. This is Balto, Jet black Siberian husky of the Chukchi Siberian tribe’s stock. The word Husky originated from the word referring to Arctic people in general, Eskimos.

     The statue, a big favorite  of kids in the Park -  is on it’s place for more than 85 years.  It was done by Brooklyn born sculptor Frederick George Richard Roth. Other works of the sculpture includes Dancing Goat and Dancing Bear standing near the Central Park Zoo. 

      

Balto was named  after Norwegian explorer Samuel Johannesen Balto, who participated in the first recorded crossing of the interior of Greenland, together with famous  North Polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen. In the winter of 1925, Balto and other sled dogs and their drivers became national heroes when they successfully delivered a diphtheria serum to the isolated residents of the small city Nome, Alaska.

     Diphtheria is a highly contagious and potentially life-threatening bacterial disease. The disease can be treated with an antitoxin (serum containing antibody to neutralize the toxin) or prevented by vaccines. The antibodies in the horse serum neutralized the toxin causing the patient's symptoms. Vaccine was developed by German physiologist von Behring in 1913. Today’s vaccine is recommended for all infants and for adults who have not been immunized.

     Nome lies just two degrees south of the Arctic Circle. From November to July, the port was icebound and inaccessible by steamship. The only available aircraft were water-cooled World War I planes that were not reliable in cold weather. The only link to the rest of the world during the winter was the Iditarod Trail

The trail ran 938 miles (1,510 km) from the port of Seward in the south. Welch was the only one doctor in Nome. He had noticed the first case of diphtheria in December. Welch had only expired diphtheria antitoxin. He had ordered a new supply but the port was closed for the winter before the serum arrived. Welch sent a radio telegram to all the major Alaska towns – there were more than 20 confirmed cases of diphtheria in the end of January. Without the antitoxin the disease would kill the area's entire population of about 10,000 people.

   The nearest supply was in Anchorage, but the train line from Anchorage reached only as far as the city about 675 miles from Nome. Officials asked local dogsled teams for help. The drivers delivered the serum in 5 days and 7 hours. Under normal circumstances, the trip would have taken a single driver and dog team 15 to 20 days. Recognizing the bravery and tenacity of the drivers and dogs, President Calvin Coolidge rewarded each man with a gold medal, and the territory of Alaska gave them each $25.

The price for ½ gallon of milk at that time was 33 cents  - so  $25 dollars was not a big sum.

   The serum run received national press through radio and headlines in the United States and Alaska, both during and after the run. As the lead dog of the final leg of the journey, Balto received much attention. New York dog lovers raised money to honor the Balto. The statue was dedicated in December 1925. Balto spent a few years touring with sideshow entertainers and after that found a permanent home in the Cleveland Zoo. After his death at 11 in 1933, he was mounted and placed on display in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Learn more:
History of the 1925 Nome Serum Run

Balto's true story
Animation Movie about Balto (1995)