Statues are silent sentries

By James B. Meadow, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 13, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Darin McGregor © The Rocky

Sculptor Alexander Phimster Proctor's "On the War Trail" depicting an American Indian on a horse is silhouetted against the sky as the sun sets in Civic Center Park. The statue was presented to the city by Stephan Knight in 1922.

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Reporter James Meadow and photographer Darin McGregor spend days and nights at Civic Center to document life at the park in the heart of Denver. Read more stories, view slide shows, and comment on the series.

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His spear was broken and someone had stretched a condom over his horse's flaring nostrils, but the proud Native American didn't have nearly as much cause to complain as a bloodied Christopher Columbus, or the lion whose tail had been brutally severed - no fewer than three times.

In other words, it's not always easy being an objet d'art - or, for that matter, a drinking fountain - in The Park. Bronze and steel and marble sometimes fall prey to knuckle-dragging vandals - to say nothing of whimsical ones - trying to exert their will. Still, on balance, the state of The Park's statuary isn't bad.

Just take a look.

The statues that pretty much everybody notices first are On the War Trail and Broncho Buster, featuring an Indian brave and a gutsy cowboy, respectively. Each 1,500-pound bronze behemoth is the handiwork of Alexander Phimister Proctor, whose animal sculptures graced Theodore Roosevelt's White House. Plus, according to the City and County of Denver's Web site, his "immortal mustang group at the University of Texas . . . has been called the greatest equine statue in the world."

Somewhat less appreciated is On The War Trail. See, not only was the Native American protagonist's spear broken by a vandal - and left that way for years - the nostrils of his horse were swathed in that prophylactic by someone who either had a sense of humor or absolutely no clue about what safe sex means.

Even today, the steed's nares are gnarly, crusted with some crud. Either it's some flaw in the bronze (hey, the statue is 86 years old) or some pigeons have learned to defecate in defiance of the laws of gravity.

Defiance of another kind led Native American protesters to symbolically dis the Christopher Columbus statue that holds court to the north. Dedicated in 1970, 19 years later the statue became a flash point for Native American anger over what they claim was Columbus' participation in the genocide of Indian peoples when fake blood was splashed on it.

This likely would have appalled Alfred Adamo, The Park's patron saint of statues. Not only did Adamo - an Italian immigrant who lived in Denver in the early 1900s before moving to Detroit to make his fortune - pay for this statue, he anted up for three others.

In 1954, in gratitude to the help he had been given by Emily Griffith, Adamo paid for a black marble drinking fountain dedicated to her. Today, due to a busted water line - and the city's belief that nobody gets thirsty in The Park - the fountain has become the Emily Griffith Memorial Ashtray.

Adamo's largesse didn't stop here. At some point - and nobody in the city seems to know when for sure - he underwrote the addition of the two bronze lions that stand guard at the east entrance of the Greek Amphitheater. Sad to say, the west lion has had buzzard's luck. Twice, his tail was broken off by lugbolt-brained people. It was broken off a third - and final - time when it was pushed free of its epoxied moorings and it crashed to the amphitheater concrete. Both lions have since been bolted in place.

No such vandalism has visited Robert Mangold's abstract steel-pipe sculpture at The Park's northwest corner near Colfax and Bannock. Unfortunately, bad drivers have. On several occasions, cars have collided with it, including one Cadillac that really took a beating from the anonymous sculpture.

FYI, it's anonymous because Mangold has chosen not to name it. Actually, he didn't even choose to locate it there. The 14-foot-high tree-like work used to be anchored on a traffic island on Colfax until the island disappeared around 1975.

Although it looks a tad out of place - almost like an afterthought - Mangold's sculpture has proven to be popular with some of The Park's denizens. If popular means using some of its hollowed pipes as a place to cram trash.

At this point, Park devotees will note we have overlooked the two spitting seals in Seal Pond. So be it. Call it a case of invoking statues of limitation.

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