Statue

The Maryland Stadium Authority yesterday approved a plan to erect a statue of former Colts great Johnny Unitas near the football stadium at Camden Yards. The bronze statue, to be paid for through private donations, would be built in the shadows of PSINet Stadium and, with its base, would stand 19 feet tall - a height that is significant for both artistic and symbolic reasons. Not only did Unitas wear 19 on his jersey, but "anything shy of that [height] would not be very significant in front of that monolithic stadium," said Lutherville sculptor Frederick Kail, who plans to raise $250,000 for the project.

A sturdier pair of eyeglasses that will be more resistant to vandalism are being retrofitted on the slightly larger-than-life bronze statue of James W. Rouse, a Columbia Association spokeswoman said. The sculpture of the visionary developer of Columbia, who died in 1996, was removed from its site near Lake Kittamaqundi in Town Center last week. The statue's creator, William F. Duffy, who is adding the new glasses, said one side of Rouse's existing eyeglass frames were removed by recent vandalism.

A 4-year-old Sykesville boy was killed yesterday afternoon at an Ellicott City spiritual retreat after he fell from a small religious statue, which toppled onto his head.Cooper Dean Gregory Williams had been playing with the 2-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary at the Our Lady Center, where his grandmother is the manager. Apparently he climbed onto its marble platform, then grabbed the statue when he lost his balance.The boy fell down an embankment into a shallow creek, and the statue toppled over, landing on his head.

Plans to erect a larger-than-life statue of former Mayor William Donald Schaefer along the Inner Harbor shoreline failed to win approval yesterday from Baltimore's Public Art Commission, whose members questioned aspects including the proposed location and the way Schaefer was depicted by sculptor Rodney Carroll. The commissioners made it clear that they have no problem with commemorating Schaefer and appreciate that a private group headed by businessman Edwin F. Hale Sr. wants to donate the $300,000 to $500,000 statue to the city.

In its seven-year existence, the Annapolis memorial to pioneering black physician and politician Aris T. Allen has endured more than its share of indignities. Confederate flags have been taped to the statue's hands, a hangman's noose was once wrapped around its neck, and, in the most recent incident, a white pillowcase - with eyeholes and a painted red smiley face - was placed on its head. The repeated acts of racially tinged vandalism have spurred civil rights activists and members of Allen's family to propose moving the statue to a garden area between the new $20 million Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. Senate Office Building and the James Senate Office Building in Annapolis.

Lady Baltimore, a 182-year-old woman who presides in the middle of Calvert Street, is undergoing reconstructive surgery.For two months, planners and restoration workers have been focusing their attention on trying to get the Lady Baltimore statue -- a key figure that adorns the Battle Monument -- back into top shape.Time, weather and pollution have taken their toll on the old lady. ++ She has withstood innumerable threats of eviction -- the most emphatic in 1923, 1925 and 1930 -- and has been accused of being a traffic menace, an aesthetic blot, a cracked and moldering relic.

A statue intended to honor the man whose motto is "Do It Now" isn't likely to be done anytime soon. Plans to erect a 9-foot-tall sculpture of William Donald Schaefer, the former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor, on the Inner Harbor promenade have apparently collapsed - the result of a volatile combination of a colorful subject, a strong-willed benefactor and a new process for reviewing proposals for public art on city-owned land. The man who proposed the sculpture for a prominent Inner Harbor parcel and offered to underwrite it as a tribute to Schaefer, First Mariner Bancorp Chairman and Chief Executive Edwin F. Hale Sr., has decided not to pursue it any longer.

Less than two months after a city art panel approved plans for a statue of former Mayor William Donald Schaefer to rise on the west shore of Baltimore's Inner Harbor, another local group is seeking permission to erect a nearby statue to Schaefer's successor, former Mayor Clarence H. Du Burns. Baltimore's Public Art Commission is scheduled to meet today to consider a proposal to erect a statue of Burns on city-owned land between the Light Street pavilion of Harborplace and the Maryland Science Center, but closer to the science center.

Ninety years after rural congregations first envisioned it, the statue of an itinerant preacher who founded the Methodist Church in America came home to Carroll County yesterday. The 1 1/2 -ton granite replica shows Robert Strawbridge preaching, with a Bible clasped in one hand and the other raised toward the heavens. The life-size monument was placed atop a pedestal in front of the restored 18th-century log cabin where Strawbridge lived and led congregations in prayer more than 200 years ago. "His face is so lifelike, and he is almost smiling," said the Rev. Charles Acker, curator of the Strawbridge Shrine near New Windsor, which draws about 2,000 visitors annually.