The “Spirit of Achievement” returns to its Icelandic roots, in an exact replica. Also, New York’s attorney general investigates a company hired to send migrants upstate.
Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll look at what a statue that looks like one from the Waldorf-Astoria is doing in Iceland. We’ll also find out what the state attorney general is looking for in an investigation of a company that New York City hired to send migrants to hotels and motels upstate.
Did a tiny town in Iceland spirit away “Spirit of Achievement”?
That would have been an achievement. You couldn’t just slip it into your backpack and walk off. It was 10 feet tall. It used to be a New York icon, the statue with its wings raised on the canopy above the Park Avenue entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
But it has mostly been out of public view since 2017, when the Waldorf closed for renovations. And Hvolsvollur, Iceland — population 1,000, according to Mayor Anton Kari — has scheduled an unveiling ceremony for this morning. The ceremony is for a statue, above, that looks suspiciously like “Spirit of Adventure.”
It turns out that the Waldorf’s statue wasn’t stolen. It was copied, after Hvolsvollur raised money for a tribute to the artist Nina Saemundsson, who created it and grew up nearby. The Waldorf says the original “Spirit of Achievement” will return when the work on the hotel is completed next year. The dedication coincides with the anniversary of Saemundsson’s birth 131 years ago today.
Friorik Erlingsson, who lives in Hvolsvollur and coordinated the effort to make a second “Spirit,” said the project began when his wife, Kristin Þórðardottir, was on the town council about eight years ago. “They were discussing the development of our town center, and she came up with the idea that the municipality should contact the Waldorf-Astoria and get a replica of the “Spirit of Achievement,” he said.
Nothing happened, he said, even though they sent a letter. Then she left the town council and was appointed the district commissioner in the south of Iceland, “so she became very busy,” he said. “I thought that I should try to help.”
He wrote more letters and emails and learned that the statue would be taken down for the renovation. He was also told that high-definition three-dimensional scans would be made, and he could get the scans if he simply asked for them. “This was very lucky, really,” he said. “I really don’t know how we would have been able to make a replica otherwise.”
A foundry in Denmark quoted him an estimate of between $60,000 and $65,000. The Icelandic government put in $30,000, which helped with fund-raising.
When the arrangements had been made and the casting was underway, Erlingsson’s anxiety surged: Would the anchors at the bottom of the statue line up with the holes in the pedestal that had been ordered? “This was keeping me up at night,” he said.
It was an unsettling moment in what Erlingsson called the “Cinderella story” of the statue. The Waldorf, planning for the building on Park Avenue that opened in 1931, announced a competition. Saemundsson “made her model just the night before the deadline,” Erlingssen said, “and the next morning she went to the committee to deliver it.”
Of some 400 entries, hers was chosen.
Saemundsson had been invited to show her work in New York in the late 1920s. She had grown up as the youngest of 15 children on a farm in Iceland but left when she was 19 to live with an aunt in Copenhagen who sent her to the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
New York was her next stop, a few years later, after she had convalesced from tuberculosis in Switzerland and gone on to Rome, where she opened a studio. Once in the United States, she also did commissions on the West Coast, including a statue called “Prometheus Bringing Fire to Earth” and a monument to the explorer Leif Erikson, both in Los Angeles. And a bust of the actress Hedy Lamarr was shown at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939 and 1940. She died in 1965 in Reykjavik.
For now, the original Waldorf statue is inside the building, in the sales area for the 375 condominiums being built along with 375 hotel rooms.
As for the statue, Mayor Kari said that it was well known in Hvolsvollur. “It was in the ‘Home Alone’ movie,” he said.
And Erlingssen said he has been sleeping well lately. The replica was a perfect fit for the pedestal.
“She’s placed in our mini-Central Park, big enough for us here,” Erlingsson said. “It’s looking southwest, looking straight toward the Waldorf, the original, with exactly 2,569 miles between them.”
Weather
Mostly sunny today, with temperatures near 80. Expect a partly cloudy night, with temps in the mid-60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Sept. 4 (Labor Day).
The latest New York news
Brooklyn fire: Three children who had been left home alone were in “extremely critical condition” and 10 firefighters were injured after two fires tore through an apartment building and several businesses in Brooklyn on Sunday,
Eric Adams visits Israel: Mayor Eric Adams of New York City traveled to Israel on Monday, the beginning of a three-day foreign trip to highlight his ties to the Jewish community.
Midtown pedestrians struck: A Honda Accord struck seven people in Midtown Manhattan, injuring one seriously, after running a red light. The 29-year-old driver was apprehended later in Queens.
Jail settlement: People who endured a week without heat or electricity while incarcerated at a Brooklyn federal jail during a “polar vortex” in 2019 could share as much as $10 million in compensation under a proposed settlement deal.
A state investigation of a city contractor
The office of the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, has opened an investigation of DocGo, a medical services company hired by New York City to move hundreds of asylum seekers to motels upstate.
James’s investigators are looking into possible violations of state or federal laws involving the treatment of migrants in DocGo’s care, according to correspondence from James to DocGo that was obtained by The New York Times. Her investigators are also looking into reports that DocGo enrolled migrants in a health care plan for which they were not eligible, according to the correspondence.
Separately, the police in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga are also investigating whether the company might have interfered in an investigation involving two allegations of sexual assault at migrant shelters run by DocGo in motels.
The chief executive of DocGo, Anthony Capone, has said that the company was cooperating with that investigation. DocGo could not be immediately reached for comment about the attorney general’s inquiry, but Capone has said the company was working to rectify problems that have surfaced in the months since the city gave the company a $432 million no-bid contract to assist with relocating migrants.
DocGo bused migrants to bargain-rate hotels and motels upstate that had been converted into shelters. The New York Times reported last month that many said they had been given false hope that they would get jobs and much-needed help upstate. Some said they had been threatened by DocGo’s hired security team.
The investigations come at a difficult moment in the migrant crisis, with Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul facing criticism from advocates — and from each other — over how they are handling the response.
METROPOLITAN diary
Sketching
Dear Diary:
I was taking the subway from Manhattan to Queens on a Thursday afternoon in October. I glanced at the person sitting next to me. He had a small book open on his lap. Taking shape on one page was a sketch of the seated figure of a woman with glasses and a wave of long hair.
My attention is always drawn to artistic ability — especially when it is being expressed on a rattling subway car — and I wondered whom the man might be drawing.
While pondering the question, I raised my gaze to look at my fellow passengers and smiled, realizing the woman in the sketchbook was sitting directly across from the artist. She smiled with her eyes, raising her eyebrows.
The man sketched meticulously, and the woman across from him sat patiently as the subway shuttled through the city.
I didn’t know anything about either one of them, and none of us spoke. Yet a simple sketch brought the three of us together better than most conversations might.
— Emily Dattilo
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Walker Clermont, Jay Root and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjMvMDgvMjIvbnlyZWdpb24vdGhlLXdhbGRvcmZzLWljb25pYy1zdGF0dWUtaGFzLWEtcmViaXJ0aC1pbi1pY2VsYW5kLmh0bWzSAQA?oc=5
2023-08-22 07:04:21Z
CBMiZGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjMvMDgvMjIvbnlyZWdpb24vdGhlLXdhbGRvcmZzLWljb25pYy1zdGF0dWUtaGFzLWEtcmViaXJ0aC1pbi1pY2VsYW5kLmh0bWzSAQA
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