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Photograph: Mike Carsten/Archigrafika
Photograph: Mike Carsten/Archigrafika

Civic Virtue, Frederick MacMonnies, 1922

Some public art can polarize opinions, but this 22-ton monster has been almost universally reviled since its debut. MacMonnies intended to represent virtue triumphing over the sirens of vice and corruption; what everyone else saw was a big, naked jerk standing on top of two naked ladies and looking super proud of himself. The statue was criticized as soon as it was unveiled in front of City Hall in 1922. (“It ain’t art to have a guy stepping on a girl’s neck that way,” a passerby was quoted as saying.) Mayor La Guardia hated the piece so much that he had it relocated to Kew Gardens in 1941. But Queens never really liked it either, and in 2011, then-Congressman Anthony Weiner floated the idea that the city sell the piece on Craigslist. This past December, Virtue found its final resting place with members of MacMonnies’s family in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Carved in the Bronx, it has now visited four out of the five boroughs. (Staten Island, you want to call next dibs?) 500 25th St at Fifth Ave, Sunset Park, Brooklyn (718-768-7300, green-wood.com)

New York statues: The amazing stories behind three statues in NYC

Seriously, though. Who the hell are these people? Discover the controversies and artistic vandalism behind these New York statues.

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You probably pass them every day, but have you ever wondered what a given New York statue is all about? For instance, why is there a statue of Lenin on the roof of a condo on the Lower East Side? And why does one statue’s knee in Washington Square Park in the West Village look like it’s caved in on itself? Read on for answers to these and more burning questions as we reveal the secret New York histories behind three figurative sculptures.

RECOMMENDED: Public art in New York guide

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