|
St. Augustine Record
For the next five years, St. Augustine's tourists will miss seeing the city's symbolic lion statues stand guard at the Bridge of Lions. "They've been standing there for 78 years," Bill Adams, city director of heritage tourism, said Thursday. "Five years is a long time to not have them there." The Bridge of Lions is undergoing a rehabilitation project, causing its lion statues to be removed so they're not damaged during construction. The project will take five years to complete. City workers sawed the lions from their concrete bases at 8:30 a.m. Thursday and completed the job by 11 a.m. There were few traffic delays and vehicles were allowed to cross the bridge.
"It's a harsh environment on the Bayfront," he said. "They have cracks in them where some water might have gotten inside, and they need to be thoroughly cleaned." One lion weighs 11,200 pounds and the other is 13,800 pounds. As the lions sat facing each other in the back of a trailer traveling downtown, Bill Harding, city public works director, said he wondered what the lions would say if they could talk. "It looked like they were saying to each other, 'Where are they taking us? Who's going to guard the bridge now?' " he said with a laugh. This is the first time the lions have been taken from the bridge since it was built in 1927. They were moved westward from the bridge in 1986. The lions were given to the city by philanthropist Andrew Anderson, who was mayor of St. Augustine in 1886, Adams said. Anderson had the lions specially made at an art gallery in Florence, Italy. They were carved from Carrara marble that's found in a region between France and Italy, Adams said.
|
Lions removed from bridge
The lions will be stored in the city's solid waste vehicle building and they will undergo some beautification, Adams said.