By Karen Lipson, The New York Times

A COUPLE of years ago, Franklin Hill Perrell, the executive director of the Roslyn Landmark Society, got a surprising phone call from an acquaintance. There was a historically important statue in the backyard of a house that was being sold, the caller said, urging Mr. Perrell to go look at it.

Mr. Perrell, new to his post, hadn’t known of the statue’s existence. But soon, he was in the yard of a private home in nearby East Hills, staring at what he remembers as “an apparition”: A giant marble sculpture of a rearing horse, its mane flying as it is restrained by a muscled groom.

“I was in shock,” he recalled, “because of the scale of it.” It “almost dwarfed the house,” said Mr. Perrell, who had been taken to the site by the acquaintance who had tipped him off, Ian Zwerdling, a Roslyn resident active in the historic preservation of the village.

The statue was one of two nearly identical sculptures, known as the Horse Tamers, created between 1910 and 1920 for Clarence and Katherine Mackay and placed in the formal garden of Harbor Hill, their 648-acre estate overlooking Roslyn.

When the Mackay mansion, designed by Stanford White, was demolished in 1947 and the property subdivided and developed, the statues, of pink Tennessee marble, were split up. One eventually wound up in front of Roslyn High School and was known to Mr. Perrell; the other remained for another 60-odd years where it had stood, on property that had become a homeowner’s backyard.

“I loved the piece,” said Bruce Shulman, who lived in the home with his wife, Melissa, and their sons, Marc and Jake, for nine years starting in 2001. But the house was being sold, and the horse, cracked and crumbling from exposure to the elements, its tamer’s head missing, faced an uncertain future.

Now, however, through community involvement, inventive fund-raising and some major benefactors, the statue is being restored to its former grandeur. Barring any glitches, it will be placed in Gerry Pond Park in Roslyn by the end of the year.

“I cannot think of any public sculpture in Nassau or Suffolk County that is comparable,” said Mr. Perrell, a former chief curator of the Nassau County Museum of Art. “This is really a great work of Beaux-Arts sculpture.”

The statue’s salvation began when the Shulmans, the departing homeowners, donated it to the Town of North Hempstead, and the Roslyn Landmark Society set about raising $100,000 for its restoration.

Even in a struggling economy, the goal was attainable, Mr. Perrell said, given the nature of the village. With a core district of 19th-century houses on the National Register of Historic Places, Roslyn is responsive to preservationist causes, he said.

The project was aided throughout by well-connected residents who donated goods and services for benefits. “Nothing came out of the proceeds. Everything went to the restoration,” said Peter Crifo, a member of the landmark society’s board who has been active on the project.

Last month, the restoration was still under way outside North Shore Architectural Stone in Glen Head, where the Horse Tamer was separated into two segments of marble, glinting in the sunshine. The statue itself weighs from 9,000 to 10,000 pounds, the firm estimates, and, when on its pedestal, stands about 25 feet tall.

The firm’s owners, Maggie and Hugh Tanchuck, were on hand as Andre Iwanczyk, a sculptor and stone restorer, used a chisel and diamond-tipped drills to do some recarving and smoothing-out of surface parts. (Much emergency work, including what Mr. Iwanczyk called “an I.V. with a penetrating epoxy” to counteract internal water damage, had already taken place.)

For authenticity, Mr. Iwanczyk has relied mostly on photographs of two 18th-century French horses, created under Louis XV for the Château de Marly outside Paris; it was on these horses that the Mackays’ sculptor, Franz Plumelet, modeled his work. The Marly horses are now in the Louvre in Paris.

The Mackay horse was an attraction last December when the Tanchucks hosted a fund-raiser at their Glen Head showroom, an elegant space of stone columns, brick walls and statuary. “We fell in love with the project,” Ms. Tanchuck said. The party brought in nearly 200 people and raised $15,000.

After that, “We got kind of stymied in our fund-raising,” said Howard Kroplick, a board member of the landmarks society. To stimulate donations, he and his wife, Rosalind, offered $25,000 as a matching grant if a second benefit raised at least that much.

The event, held in June — the day of the Belmont Stakes, in keeping with an equestrian theme — met the challenge grant. With an additional contribution from the Gerry Charitable Trust, a key supporter of the Roslyn Landmark Society, the restoration funds were in place.

Efforts are also under way to restore the Mackay gate lodge and gates, which stood at the entrance to the estate. The plan, while promising, won’t be formalized until early 2012, said Leslie Gross, the North Hempstead town clerk.

Meanwhile, the fate of the horse at Roslyn High School remains unresolved. Originally restored by a local artist, it is now in ruinous condition, held together partly by straps. “The concern is that part of the statue could collapse,” said Barry Edelson, the director of community relations for the Roslyn School District.

The district has used its Web site and local media to publicize the sculpture’s plight. “We don’t want to demolish it,” Mr. Edelson said. “But we wanted to let the community know it’s not going to last forever.”

Photo Credit Above: The sculptures during restoration at North Shore Monuments in Glen Head, NY. Photo by: Kathy Kmonicek for The New York Times

BW Photo Above: The second matching statue in place on the Mackay estate (1926). That statue is now located at the Roslyn High School. Photo Credit: The Bryant Library Local History Collection. Above: Sculptor Andre Iwanczyk working on individual pieces during the restoration process. Photo Credit: Kathy Kmonicek for The New York Times