http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/nyregion/lenin-statue-lower-east-side.html 2016-09-26 20:50:02 With Statue’s Removal, Lenin Is Momentarily Toppled on the Lower East Side An 18-foot statue of Vladimir Lenin was taken down from the roof of a building on Houston Street, but is expected to be reinstalled just down the block. === The copper statue of Over time it became one of the Michael Rosen, the developer and one of the owners of the building, called Red Square, said last week that he had learned that the building could soon be sold to someone who might not want to keep the likeness of Lenin. He said he then arranged with a business partner to take down the statue, which he installed in 1994 as a sort of experiment with symbols. “I wanted to do something creative, fun, an homage to the history of the Lower East Side, which had been a hotbed of political thought,” he said, adding that the statue originally had been positioned to appear as if Lenin was waving toward Wall Street. When Mr. Rosen began construction of Red Square in 1989, a year after police officers and anti-gentrification protesters clashed during a “I’m completely aware it was filled with contradictions,” Mr. Rosen said, speaking by phone from Hanoi, where he now heads a Vietnamese agriculture and food company. “We were building a building that was going to be rented at rates that were not otherwise affordable in the neighborhood.” Whatever reservations people may have had about the building, the 18-foot statue, which was created in the Soviet Union by a sculptor, Yuri Gerasimov, appeared to have more fans than detractors. Among them was Joe Sims, a member of the Communist Party USA’s national board, who said he used to include the statue in a walking tour of Lower Manhattan and saw it as an example of changing political attitudes. “At certain points in our history, particularly during the McCarthy era and afterward, Communists were demonized,” Mr. Sims said recently by phone. “A lot of that is gone now.” A Red Square resident, Sarah Dubrovsky, said recently that she would miss the statue, adding that it felt “a little like a landmark.” Michael Shaoul, the longtime property manager of Red Square and Mr. Rosen’s business partner, said that he, too, had become attached to the likeness. “My favorite view of him was walking up Essex Street,” he said. “From that angle he looked like an old man feeding pigeons.” Mr. Shaoul said the statue would be on display again within about a month, installed on the roof of a building a half-block south of Red Square, which is owned by investors that he and Mr. Rosen organized. A construction manager who supervised the removal of the statue from Red Square on Sept. 19 said it had spent that night in a crane yard in Jamaica, Queens. The manager, Peter Marciano, arranged for it to be brought the next day to its new location atop a walk-up on Norfolk Street because he thought it would be safer there. “I didn’t want him to be held hostage or kidnapped,” Mr. Marciano said. “Those stairs will deter all but the most severe fans of communism.” On Saturday afternoon the statue lay prone on the roof of the building on Norfolk Street. Up close, it was clear that Lenin was wearing a tie and a vest with four buttons and had a grayish-green complexion, apparently the result of oxidation. Across Houston Street two people on the roof of Red Square appeared to be gazing down at the figure. Mr. Rosen said he was often reminded of the statue while walking past a similar one on Dien Bien Phu Street in Hanoi. Even though his version of Lenin would soon be displayed anew, he said he felt “a little sad” that it could not remain on the roof of Red Square. “I live in a largely Buddhist country now,” he said. “But I’m not doing a good job accepting the impermanence of things.”