Restoring the Lake George statues

By Ben Westcott, Chronicle Staff Writer

Three bronze statues in Lake George Battlefield State Park will get $44,000 in restoration — mostly from private benefactors — in time hopefully to be rededicated by summer, said Battlefield Park Alliance President John DiNuzzo said.

The statue The Battle of Lake George, depicting the British General William Johnson and native American King Hendrick, dedicated in 1903, will have over $18,000 of work done, replacing two hatchets, or tomahawks, on each side of the entry gate that Mr. DiNuzzo said have been “vandalized and taken away.”

The Mohawk Warrior, dedicated in 1921, depicts a Native American with water trickling through his hand kneeling at a pond. It will have $9,000 put into it.

The statue “represents the fact that Native Americans fished and hunted in the area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans,” said Mr. DiNuzzo.

It will have two arrows in the warrior’s quiver replaced, after they were snapped off in an act of vandalism. Additionally, more flow will be added to the water coming out of the warrior’s hand, and the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation will do some landscaping work around the site so the pond will once again be substantial.

“It will have some swirl in the water so the water in the pond won’t stagnate,” Mr. DiNuzzo said. Some fence pickets with bent steel at the site will be replaced.

The statue of the 17th century Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues, dedicated in 1939, will get nearly $17,000 in work.

The cross in his left hand, which has bent over time, will be repaired and welded back on.

“Probably a tree limb came down on it at some point, because it’s a good 15 feet above the ground — I don’t think anybody would have climbed up and done that,” Mr. DiNuzzo theorized.

All three statues will be washed and waxed “so they will shine again as opposed to being varying degrees of discolor,” Mr. DiNuzzo noted.

The work is being done by Kingston-based Workshop Art Fabrication.

A grant from the Lake George Park Commission is paying for part of the work on the Isaac Jogues statue.

Otherwise, the money is coming from private benefactors.

Mr. DiNuzzo emphasized that the sculptures are not only great works of history, but great works of art.

“For a community the size of Lake George to have these sculptors — which each has its own history — is just incredible,” he said.

“There’s very few communities of Lake George’s size that have this quality of sculpture in them.”

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