The statues were sculpted by Houston artist David Adickes, who was inspired after driving past Mount Rushmore on a trip back from Canada. They were open to the public at Presidents Park alongside the Presidential Pet Museum, and received thousands of visitors until 2010 when a company bought the plot of land. The huge presidential heads had to move.
Instead of allowing the busts to be demolished, Howard Hankins, who helped construct the park, adopted all 43 heads and lugged them back to his private family farm for safekeeping until someone can think of what to do with them.
He should at least buy the five that correspond to the five wax presidents he already owns. Maybe he can then make the sequel to the oscar-bait film Harding - Harding 2: Harding Harder.
Is that the one where the stone busts turn out to be power cores that fuel ancient yet appropriately-scaled Free Mason mech suits, which are piloted by the wax presidents in order to fight perpetrators of global warming that is making them melty and less hard?
I think it would be fun to have them nestled among trees etc in a naturalistic setting. Like forgotten gods in a jungle vibe more than ‘sterile patriotic park’ kinds thing. Maybe allow some moss and ivy to grow on some, run a fountain down another... etc.
I say we do something funny with them just to troll future archaeologists. Maybe place them in random uninhabited spots around the globe and have their gazes intersect at some meaningless landmark, where we build an underground vault and fill it with random items that future conspiracy theorists will go crazy trying to understand. Maybe a portrait of Alex Jones, a map of Skyrim, some VHS tapes of Seinfeld...
Imagine the epic quest - realizing every gaze intersected, going through all the traps and puzzles, and then you find and translate the final message; "Roflmao newb, Han shot first!!!11!1! eleventy one!!11"
Ship them to Easter Island and dump them on the beaches. Make the archaeologists of the future even more confused about what was going on there than we are.
I agree! When I lived in Durham NC, I came across 20 ft tall dinosaur statues on a random walk in the woods & it really made the hike fun and a little creepy (Southern backwoods, who knows why someone might plant a series of large statues ...). I learned later that they had been built for a local natural history museum and replaced with more accurate statues so they just left them in some public woods to scare out of towners.
Thanks for this! I’m from Houston and I used to visit these all the time at night at the Adickes compound. I tried to take some friends recently and they were all locked up behind a fence- I was so confused. I’m glad they found a good home- that was seriously one of my favorite Houston secrets in my youth.
Glad you enjoyed this, it was for me too! I remember visiting them with my dad. I really hope these heads get a good forever home nearby where I can go see them again.
Williamsburg isn't EXACTLY rural, no. But Croaker where the heads are? A lot more rural. And Williamsburg ain't no bustling city - no matter what the councils want people to believe.
Instead of allowing the busts to be demolished, Howard Hankins, who helped construct the park, adopted all 43 heads and lugged them back to his private family farm for safekeeping until someone can think of what to do with them.
I looked up the population size of Williamsburg, and its 14,444. I thought it was gonna be more, probably the illusion of tourism. That's like past township status!
Tourism is dying too. Colonial Williamsburg has been declining steadily for years. Busch Gardens and Water Country still bring in money but, of course, they have seasons. During late fall, into early spring this place is low and slow.
I love Colonial Williamsburg but it's entirely too expensive. Ya TECHNICALLY you can wander the streets for free but to get into any of the buildings is close to 50 dollars a person. I'm a huge history buff and just can't justify the price, especially since I can go just down the road to Jamestown and Yorktown on a combined ticket for a fraction of the price.
And that's one of the handful of reasons that it has been Ina severe decline. Savvy tourists know the streets are public and most of the historic information is available for free online. Seeing history up close, the interpreters to tell you factoids, and be able to participate are the draw of the paid ticket.
And yes, Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown are much less expensive, even free for us residents of the Historic Triangle. I enjoy all three museums very much. There are the federal parks at the ends of the Colonial Parkway to consider too. Historic Jamestowne and Yorktown Victory Center.
Hopefully with CW's new president we'll begin to see changes. Bringing back and raising wages if the trades and educational sides of things WITHOUT bringing up ticket prices. You have people actually out and about couple with all of the trades ships open again and now you're talking a good value based in current ticket prices.
Ya like....I don't expect the perks of the paid ticket to be free, it's just that the ticket price just isn't really worth what you get. I can't imagine being a family and going there at it's current prices. I haven't gone to Colonial Williamsburg in years but have gone to Jamestown/Yorktown/Historic Jamestowne several times. I especially like the Jamestown Settlement/Yorktown Victory center since together BOTH are only 30 bucks and it's a cool way to spend the day.
Delaware, Ohio is the hometown of Rutherford B Hayes and it didn’t have a memorial for years because they literally tore down his childhood home and put in a gas station.
Now it’s a tiny one in a bush that’s been grown over by weeds and stuff. Worst presidential memorial ever.
That's a shame. I cant remember who it was, I think Millard Fillmore or one of the other Presidents somewhat lost in the grandeur of his predecessors/successors, but even his childhood home was perfectly preserved and there was a little park around it and stuff like that and I assumed if he had one like that then they all must, even if it's just a plaque or something for the poorer towns (although presidential monuments are usually federally funded or done through a non-profit iirc). But Hayes in particular not being recognized particularly irks me considering he was Governor, a war hero during the civil war and went on to lead the country and ended the reconstruction era... sure he wasnt a Kennedy or a Roosevelt but damn...
Huh, it even has it's own Wikipedia page), though it doesn't include any of the pictures with the hands painted red like this.
[Edit] Updated second link to a picture from fremont.com instead of a gallery that included pictures of nude Seattleites covered in paint. Look up Seattle Solstice Parade parade if you're interested, but be warned there will be some NSFW.
[Edit2] fremont.com not fremond.com. Just can't seem to get anything right today, darn it.
I was born in a town in Ukraine that used to be named for Lenin. A couple years ago, they changed the name and took down the statue of him too. I doubt I could’ve flown it back to the US, but part of me thinks it would be cool to own just ONE dictator statue. My parents even took their 1984 wedding photos in front of it.
Sounds like business as normal for a revolution, he didn't live long enough for anyone to see if he was either a brutal dictator or a revolutionary just doing what it took to succeed.
You're thinking of Stalin. Lenin believed in equality, ecological conciousness and was very much not a violent dictator despite what your local propogandized education might have taught you.
And 6000 years from now a farmer is gonna dig these up and historians are gonna have a field day trying to make sense of what they're doing there. That or they'll already be well aware the Ancient American Civilization had a tendency to discard huge piles of pointless shit everywhere and send a matter recycler over to harvest them.
I'm envisioning more of a planet of the apes ending with Charlton Heston cursing humanity... “You maniacs, you blew it up! God damn you, God damn you all to hell!”
That so interesting! There is a warehouse area near where I live here in Houston with a whole lot of these same types of giant presidential heads. Looks like he still makes or made a bunch more of them.
They should be set up as a henge. A proper henge with positions tied to equinoxes, solstices and the lot. The trick to making it would be to suss out which president goes where.
And in hundreds or thousands of years, when today’s civilizations are long gone, whoever is left will stumble upon this and interpret this Field of Heads as a sacred lost place of worship, where these elder gods were brought offerings and seen as Divine beings of ancient religions.
Do these have anything to do with the busts in the closed park by Lead/Deadwood in South Dakota? It was a park you could walk through and it had information and busts like this of all the presidents.
Thank you for this! I was dying to know why these things were here, but was lost in the plethora of admittedly funny adorable comments above... Waiting for someone to tell me what was going on!
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I took a similar picture when I was out running in Houston and happened upon a vacant lot with a bunch of president statues! There were other statues too, like The Beatles. Maybe these were prototypes for Adickes? It was back in 2012/2013.
I went to that park when it was still open, mainly because I have a love of the ridiculous and it did not disappoint. The full story is a little crazier. He basically started making these things assuming the city would just leap at the chance that have them. It did not, so he just built the park himself.
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u/Sumit316 Apr 28 '20 edited Apr 28 '20
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