Ten years ago, the village of North Tarrytown, New York, changed its name to "Sleepy Hollow" to exploit its association with long-dead author Washington Irving, and his famous short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

Now the linkage will be permanently cemented with the arrival, hopefully by Halloween, of an 11-ton, 18-foot-tall steel sculpture depicting the climactic moment of the Sleepy Hollow tale, when the Headless Horseman hurls a pumpkin at the fleeing Ichabod Crane.

The non-traditional sculpture, made from laser-cut steel plates welded and bolted together to form layered contours, is chemically treated to speed its rusting and give it a pleasing cinnamon hue. It will stand on a concrete base along a narrow strip of land along US 9, just south of the Old Dutch Burying Ground, where Washington Irving is interred, and just north of the Pocantico River, which Crane was supposedly crossing when he was overtaken by an airborne vegetable.

[10/29/2006]