Statues
There are two prominently-sited statues outside the Courthouse. In front of the building is a statue of Thomas Jefferson by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, given to the city in 1901. The second, on the corner of Sixth and Jefferson, across from the Louisville City Hall, is a statue of King Louis XVI, that was presented as a gift to Louisville from Louisville's sister city, Montpellier, France, on July 17, 1967. At the presentation, a crowd of 300 dignitaries, both French and American, saw Montpellier's Mayor François Delmas officially present it to Louisville Mayor Kenneth Schmied. It was sculpted in 1829 by Achille-Joseph Valois for the king's surviving daughter, Marie-Thérèse, queen dowager of France, and made its public debut in Montpellier. However, the Second French Revolution soon took place, endangering the statue. It was then placed at a military base to protect it, and then was placed in Montpellier University, and then finally in the municipal archives' storage basement. In 1899 the statue was found to have an arm damaged, and to be in disrepair. It stayed in storage until it was decided in 1966 to give the statue to Louisville, making a seven-month journey between Montpellier and Louisville. The Carrara marble statue weighs nine tons, and is 12 feet (3.7 m) high.
Read more about this topic: Louisville Metro Hall
Famous quotes containing the word statues:
“America loves the representation of its heroes to be not just larger than life, but stupendously, awesomely bigger than anything else. If blue whales built statues to each other they’d be smaller then these.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)
“And are not men than they more blind,
Who having eyes yet never find
The bliss in which they move:
Like statues dead
They up and down are carried,
Yet neither see nor love.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“There’s a wonderful family called Stein:
There’s Gert and there’s Ep and there’s Ein.
Gert’s poems are bunk,
Ep’s statues are junk,
And no-one can understand Ein.”
—Anonymous.