You’d have to be pretty brazen (or very drunk?) to abduct a statue from a city park.
But there’s something extra heartless about making off with Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.
It happened 14 years ago in Carl Schurz Park, along the East River. There, a bronze Peter Pan has held court in the middle of a garden since 1975.
One morning in August 1998, however, Peter Pan vanished. “The statue was made by Charles Andrew Hafner in 1928 and showed the slender youth in his distinctive feathered cap and belted tunic sitting on a tree stump with a fawn, a rabbit and a toad at his feet,” wrote The New York Times.
“It had been cut off its stone base and weighed about a thousand pounds, officials said.”
Dozens of police officers investigated—this is the park that’s home to Gracie Mansion, after all. The next day, a scuba team found it at the bottom of the East River.
After divers recovered the statue, Peter Pan went back up in his usual spot in the park, where he’s been enchanting visitors ever since.
So who did it? Though no suspect was ever identified, “investigators said the disappearance of the beloved statue from Carl Schurz Park appeared, appropriately enough, to be the work of a band of overly high-spirited youths, perhaps latter-day Lost Boys who turned on their own icon,” a follow-up Times article stated.
Tags: Carl Schurz Park, East River waterfront, New York City statues, Peter Pan Carl Schurz Park, Peter Pan New York City, Peter Pan statue, Peter Pan statue stolen, Upper East Side park, vandalism in New York City
Ephemeral New York 
November 22, 2012 at 9:56 am |
I can hear their roaring cheers and laughter as the statue hits the water, sinking to the bottom… Who else but kids? Good story.
November 22, 2012 at 1:31 pm |
Now that Christmas season is upon us, this story reminds me the time around 1990 that someone stole the statue of the infant Jesus from the creche in front of St. Anthony’s Church on Houston Street in the South Village.
The creche was right next to a statue of the Virgin Mary, where local mafia boss, Vinny “The Chin” Gigante would famously wander over from his house in the middle of the night in slippers and bathrobe, mumbling to himself, to ‘pray”, in an effort to convince the authorities that he was too crazy to stand trial.
One Christmas season the statue of baby Jesus was stolen. The story in the neighborhood goes that the word went out from “Chin” that anyone caught with the statue or trying to pawn or sell it had to account to him. Chin was an alleged murderer.
Wasn’t everyone relieved a few days later when infant Jesus miraculously returned to his crib, all safe and sound!
November 22, 2012 at 1:45 pm |
Ha ha! The good word was quickly spread to all good men and they must of heard 😉
November 22, 2012 at 3:00 pm |
I hadn’t heard the baby Jesus story, thanks SS! I do recall when the elderly mother of Vinny “The Chin” was mugged near her Sullivan Street home. That mugger picked the wrong old Italian lady….
November 22, 2012 at 3:11 pm |
Or the time around 1970 when an old lady was mugged on Thompson near Prince, and was caught by the local guys, taken to a rooftop, and, for some inexplicable reason, decided to jump off it, noted in the police reports as a “suicide”.
November 22, 2012 at 3:31 pm
Ah, good ‘ol Little Italy justice.
November 22, 2012 at 3:34 pm
No such justice in Nolita, that’s for sure.
November 23, 2012 at 4:05 pm |
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Thieves-love-Hermes-Statue-of-Greek-god-is-2731232.php We have a story like that her, it is the Hermes, statue up the block from us, back in the70’s it was stolen, no one could find it, till there was an anonymous lead that someone had it in their living room. Police found and returned the stature, were is sat happily, only to have it stolen again on the anniversary of the original theft… 30 years later, a few years ago. It is back, I did not hear how they found him this time, but it was odd to see him gone, often someone has places a flower in his hand.
November 23, 2012 at 9:10 pm |
I just don’t understand how anyone can make off with a thousand pound hunk of bronze and not be stopped by a cop!
November 28, 2012 at 9:04 pm |
50 feet under the east river? that’s good work.
January 2, 2013 at 4:17 am |
[…] of that replica, installed in 1972 by a neighborhood philanthropist who also donated the bronze Peter Pan statue to Carl Schurz Park, about 30 blocks north along the East […]
December 19, 2013 at 3:38 am |
[…] Years ago, I jogged past Carl Shurtz Park every day, but I never knew Peter Pan lived there. […]
May 8, 2017 at 9:04 pm |
That statue of Peter Pan was created it in 1972 by my Grandfather He did many paintings as well. I have also the family Tree he did in German that goes back to 1412 to the present. I was only nine when he passed away in 1960. What a Grandfather, we used to play Checkers and Card games together; what a great man.
November 15, 2023 at 8:53 am |
Sort of a comparable story….
Back in high school, we had a certain English teacher who – for the sake of this narrative -– I’ll refer to as Mr. Humbert. Humbert was a much admired fellow, as he boasted a quick wit, a youthful, rebellious demeanor and an endearingly insouciant regard towards the school’s administration. His classes were informative, engaging and even fun, and many of us looked up to Mr. Humbert, as he felt like “one of us,” so to speak. Members of my class weren’t the only ones who appreciated Mr. Humbert – who, given the humble income of educators at the time, moonlit in the summer months at the Baskin Robbins just up the street, as it happened, from Moby Dick’s restaurant on 85th and Madison. It was certainly odd to see one’s English teacher dispensing ice cream to snot-nosed Upper East Side youngsters, but I believe we all respected Mr. Humbert’s work ethic.
Now, honestly, I don’t recall if it was specifically prompted by some quip he might have uttered about it, or perhaps because it was such a prominent and obvious character from Humbert’s slavishly beloved American literature, but the missing white, plaster whale was allegedly liberated from its long-tethered moorings atop the awning of Moby Dick’s restaurant by a resourceful coterie of upperclassmen — whose identities have never been confirmed, or at least not to me – and given to Mr. Humbert on behalf their entire class as a token of their collective esteem. Legend further has it that in order to successfully remove the unwieldy replica of the fabled aquatic marine mammal, they had to cut it in two. One wonders how this feat was achieved with any semblance of stealth, efficiency or finesse, but – somehow – they managed this bit of petty larceny and wanton vandalism.
There may be more to this particular story, but, honestly, it’s so long ago, that it’s hard to dig that far back. Last I heard, Mr. Humbert – who left our school shortly after my class graduated a year later – still possessed the two halves of the white whale, although I don’t know if he still does. After an umpteenth reunion a couple of years back, Mr. Humbert made a bit of a histrionic statement about needing to sever ties with us, for whatever reason, and move on with his life. So be it. Again, there may be more to this story.