![]() ![]() ![]() I think it’s a wonderful asset to Newport.” It’s unfortunate that the rider has been ripped off, and I think the base needs some work. “If you’ve seen photographs of it when it was new, it was quite elaborate and a very, very attractive statue. “It’s sad to see it in its current condition,” said Paul Szapary, Vanderbilt’s great nephew and also a committee member. More recently, the sculpture of the determined boy atop one of the horses was stolen, and the statue now sits tucked away, riderless and deteriorating with time. In the mid-20th century, the memorial was moved off Broadway to a small park nearby, and in the process, the holes where water was pumped to the trough were filled and the base replaced with concrete, with the original pieces sold off by the city. At the time of the statue’s creation, the horse and carriage were still a common form of transportation, and for years the monument provided drinking water to the thirsty equines carrying their masters up and down Broadway. The original work depicted an athletic youth reigning in two fervent thoroughbred horses in bronze sculpture set upon a cylindrical pedestal and a large, working horse trough attached to an octagonal, rose granite base. The Vanderbilt memorial was designed by artist Eugene Morahan and placed on Broadway in the years following the businessman’s death aboard the RMS Lusitania in 1915. “We think it needs to be in a more prominent place than stuck in the back of a park that most people don’t even notice when you go by it.” “I felt that it was time for a group of people to get together to address the condition of the monument and try to bring it back to the way it looked originally,” said Federico Santi, a committee member. ![]()
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