Andy Gump Statue
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Andy Gump was the lead character in a Chicago Tribune comic strip that was wildly popular long before you were born. Its creator, Sidney Smith, lived in this upscale town, and the Tribune was so pleased with the success of his strip (and the circulation dollars that it brought in) that they had a statue made of Gump and placed it on Smith's property. When Smith died in 1935, the town, for some reason, moved it into a downtown park.
The statue was reportedly "smashed to smithereens" in a drunken riot in 1967, which normally would have been the end of a statue to a comic strip character that had been out of print for over thirty years (tipster Phillip Ginder notes that "While the creator of "The Gumps" did die in 1935, the strip was continued by another artist until 1959. When the statue was destroyed in 1967, the strip had only been out of print for eight years..,). The town built a NEW Andy Gump statue, which is now on display.
Andy Gump Statue
- Address:
- Lake Geneva, WI [Show Map]
- Directions:
- Downtown. Just south of Hwy 50. Turn south on either Wrigley Drive or Center St. one block to Flatiron Park. The statue is in the park, looking out over the lake.
Nearby Offbeat Places
- Watson's Wild West Museum - 2,000 Branding Irons, Elkhorn, WI - 10 mi.
- Statue of Romeo, The Killer Elephant, Delavan, WI - 11 mi.
- Groundhog Day Movie Town, Woodstock, IL - 19 mi.
- In the region: Harley-Davidson Museum, Milwaukee, WI - 40 mi.
