re: As statues come down in NOLA, never forget, Seattle has a statue of Lenin

Note that the statue has one hand painted red... Fremont is a querkey Seattle community. I lived there for a year before buying our home...loved it.

From Wikki

The statue was constructed by a Bulgarian sculptor Emil Venkov, under a 1981 commission from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.[1][2] While following the bounds of his commission, Venkov intended to portray Lenin as a bringer of revolution, in contrast to the traditional portrayals of Lenin as a philosopher and educator.[citation needed]

Venkov's work was completed and installed in Poprad, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), in 1988 at a cost of 3,340,000 Czechoslovak koruna ($111,333 in 1993 United States dollars),[3] shortly before the fall of Czechoslovak communism during the 1989 Velvet Revolution.[1] Despite popular belief, the Poprad Lenin was not toppled in the demonstrations during the fall of communism. Instead, it was quietly removed from Lenin's Square, in front of Poprad's main hospital, several months after the Velvet Revolution.[citation needed]

Acquisition and move to Seattle Edit
Lewis E. Carpenter, an English teacher in Poprad originally from Issaquah, Washington, found the monumental statue lying in a scrapyard ready to be sold for the price of the bronze; Carpenter had met and befriended Venkov while in Czechoslovakia. In close collaboration with a local journalist and good friend, Tomáš Fülöpp, Carpenter approached the city officials with a claim that despite its current unpopularity, the sculpture was still a work of art worth preserving, and he offered to buy it for $13,000.[1] After many bureaucratic hurdles, he finally signed a contract with the mayor on March 16, 1993.[4]

With the help of Venkov, the statue was cut into three pieces and shipped to the United States at a total cost of $40,000.[1] Carpenter financed much of that via mortgaging his home.[5] The statue arrived in Issaquah in August 1993, and Carpenter planned to install it in front of a Slovak restaurant. He died in a car accident in February 1994, during public debates on whether to display the statue in Issaquah that ended in rejection from the suburb's residents.[6] After Carpenter's death, his family planned to sell the statue to a Fremont foundry to be melted down and repurposed into a new piece. The foundry's founder, Peter Bevis, sought to instead display the statue in Fremont, and agreed to have the Fremont Chamber of Commerce hold the sculpture in trust until a buyer is found. The statue was unveiled on June 3, 1995, at the corner of Evanston Avenue North and North 34th Street, one block south of a salvaged Cold War rocket fuselage, another artistic Fremont attraction.[7]

The statue was moved two blocks north to the intersection of Fremont Place North, North 36th Street and Evanston Avenue North in 1996, adjacent to a Taco del Mar and a gelato shop.[8][9] The new location is also 3 blocks west of the Fremont Troll, another Fremont art installation situated under the Aurora Bridge.

The Carpenter family continues to seek a buyer for the statue. As of 2015 the asking price is $250,000, up from a 1996 price tag of $150,000.[8][10]