The Charging
Bull, also known as the Wall Street Ball, was also a gift to the city of New
York. Arturo Di Modica, a
Sicilian immigrant who had found success in New York as an artist, spent
$350,000 of his own money to cast the bull in his studio as a Christmas gift to
the city. Even though Di Modica’s bull
seems menacing, with flared nostrils and an aggressive stance was intended as a
symbol of New York’s drive, optimism and willingness to barrel ahead against
the odds and in spite of what had come before; conceived days after the
stock-market crash of 1987.
10 days before Christmas, twenty-five years ago, Di Modica
and his co-conspirators knew they only had 4-1/2 minutes to deliver (illegally)
the 3 ½ ton Charging Bull before the night watchman would be back. The group lowered the bronze beast right into
the middle of Broad Street, and right under the exchange’s Christmas tree. Di
Modica stood at the corner, watching and waiting for morning to witness
people’s reaction.
The general public loved the Charging Bull, but New York
Stock Exchange executives did not and called in the police. The NYSE hired private contractors to move
the bull to Queens. Di Modica paid to
bail “Charging Bull” out of the outer boroughs, and with the help of community
activists, and the city’s Parks Department, found a new home for him just a few
blocks away from the exchange in Bowling Green. There he has remained the past
25 years, greeting millions of tourists, newcomers and natives as a kind of
free-market Statue of Liberty.
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