Boy and the Boot (outdoor)
Ellenville, New York
If a Ground Zero exists for the Boy and the Boot, Ellensville is it. Ellensville was the home of Henry Brodhead, paymaster of the J.L. Mott Iron Works, which created the Boy in 1875. Brodhead brought one of the statues home and set it up on the lawn of his house. Decades passed. Henry Brodhead died. But the statue remained, and was still so popular that the local Scoresby Club (Henry had been a member) bought its own Boy and the Boot in 1925 and set it up in an Ellensville street intersection.
The original Brodhead Boy is still in Ellenville, somewhere, supposedly undergoing long-term restoration. The Scoresby Boy decayed as well, and was stuck in a closet somewhere in 1983. But Ellenviile wanted a Boy in the Boot that it could gaze upon, so in 1997 the Scoresby Boy was restored and put on permanent display inside Ellenville's museum. A copy of that statue was made in bronze, and in 1998 it was unveiled in downtown Liberty Square, replacing a fountain whose swan had been destroyed by vandals. Just another opportunity for a Boy and the Boot!