By Bill San Antonio, Roslyn Times
After three years of restoration efforts by the Roslyn Landmark Society, the Mackay horse statue will be unveiled on Saturday at its new home in the Village of Roslyn’s Gerry Park.
The free event, named StatueFEST, will take place at 2 p.m. and has a rain date for Sunday. Landmark society Executive Director Franklin Hill Perrell will serve as the event’s master of ceremony.
Expected to speak are acting Town of North Hempstead Supervisor John Riordan, Town Clerk Leslie Gross, Town Councilwoman Anna Kaplan, Nassau County Legislator Wayne Wink, town historian Howard Kroplick and Michael Mackay, the great-grandson of Clarence and Katherine Mackay.
“Through the combined efforts of the Roslyn community, local governments, the Gerry Charitable Trust and the Roslyn Landmark Society, this historic statue has been restored to its original condition just as it first appeared on Harbor Hill,” said Kroplick, who also serves as a Landmark society trustee, in a statement. “This beautiful new location in Gerry Park enables the community and visitors to the Roslyn area to enjoy the statue and to appreciate its Gold Coast history.”
The statue was one of two that stood in the west garden of the Mackays’ 648-acre Gold Coast-era Harbor Hill estate, and remained for years after the property’s dismantling in 1947 in East Hills residents Bruce and Melissa Shulman’s backyard.
When the Shulmans sold their home in 2010, they donated the statue to the Town of North Hempstead. A committee formed by the landmark society that includes Perrell, landmark society president Craig Westergard, former president Robert Sargent, John Santos, Jay Corn, Peter Crifo and Ian Zwerdling supervised the statue’s restoration and relocation at the direction of the Town of North Hempstead.
The statues, made from Tennessee pink marble, were modeled after sculptures commissioned in 1739 by France’s King Louis XV for the Chateau de Marly royal palace. Over time, the original statues moved to the Champs-Elysses, underwent restoration and are currently displayed at the Louvre in Paris.
Reproductions of the French statues, commonly referred to as the Marly Horses or the Horse Tamers, have appeared in films like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” “The Philadelphia Story” and “An American in Paris.”
The statue cost approximately $100,000 to restore, officials have said. Hugh and Maggie Tanchuck and the staff at North Shore Monuments of Glen Head completed the restoration. Charlie Vachris of Vachris Engineering engineered the statue’s foundation.
Landmark society officials said maintaining the artistic integrity of the five-ton statue was crucial to its restoration, which included a newly-carved groomsman’s head, the recreation of missing pieces and the stabilization of the entire statue. Each of the 72 pieces of the statue’s 20-ton limestone base was also moved to their original positions.
North Shore Monuments is also in possession of the other Mackay horse statue, which was donated to Roslyn High School after its removal from Harbor Hill. The statue stood in front of the high school for decades but was removed in 2012 for safety reasons.
A local grassroots group called Friends of the Horse Tamer is working toward raising the $100,000 restoration cost for Roslyn High School’s statue. Officials said the group has raised more than $61,000 through donations and funding from local governments.
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