Made in the Bronx, Exiled From Manhattan and Queens, Statue Will Head to Brooklyn

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times “Civic Virtue” now stands on Queens Boulevard, near Queens Borough Hall (in the background).

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times A female figure symbolizing vice under the male allegory of virtue.

And Staten Island, too?

Given the improbable journey of “Civic Vir tue” since it was begun by the sculptor Frederick MacMonnies in 1920, nothing can be ruled out. The statue, known rudely as “Fat Boy” or “Rough Boy,” is about to become the best traveled public monument in city history, moving from the Bronx (where it was carved) to Manhattan (1922 to 1941) to Queens (1941 until the present) to Brooklyn, where it is to settle indefinitely in Green-Wood Cemetery.

The move was authorized Nov. 13 when the municipal Design Commission approved a long-term loan of the statue to Green-Wood. In a city preoccupied with cleaning up from Hurricane Sandy (Green-Wood suffered at least $500,000 worth of damage), the authorization slipped under the radar. A mayoral spokeswoman confirmed it on Monday.

Within months, perhaps by year's end, the perennially controversial and increasingly crumbly 15-foot-high marble - an allegory of virtue standing atop the sirens of graft and corruption - will disappear from the prominent spot it has occupied for 71 years in Kew Gardens, at Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike, outside Queens Borough Hall.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The new setting for “Civic Virtue,” at Green-Wood Cemetery.

It will be swallowed into the ornamented landscape of Green-Wood Cemetery, where it will stand at Jasmine and Garland Avenues. Surrounded by ornate mausoleums, memorial statuary and 560,000 dead bodies, “Civic Virtue” will be much less conspicuous. Make of that political metaphor what you will.

“Green-Wood always has been a sculpture garden,” said its president, Richard J. Moylan, who first offered a new hom e for “Civic Virtue” in 2010. “Adding sculpture, new and old, when possible and appropriate, will help maintain interest in Green-Wood long after the last burial is made.”

For instance, a bas-relief that once adorned the headquarters of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was lent to the cemetery in 2006 and placed at the mausoleum of the society's founder, Henry Bergh. And though MacMonnies is not buried at Green-Wood, his parents and brother are. So is Angelina Crane, the benefactor of the “Civic Virtue” monument.

The fountain at the base of “Civic Virtue,” designed by the architect Thomas Hastings, will stay behind in Queens. Dan Andrews, a spokesman for Borough President Helen M. Marshall, said she hoped to restore it to working order and install seating and modest landscaping around it, creating a tranquil place that pays tribute to outstanding women in history.”

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Detail of the fountain at the base of “Civic Virtue,” which will remain in Queens.

Ms. Marshall was candid about her unwillingness to spend money on the statute. “Vice is portrayed in the form of a woman,” she said in 2007. “I have no enthusiasm for restoring it.”

“Civic Virtue” was denounced even before it was installed in front of City Hall as a demeaning depiction of woman being trampled by man. In a nation of newly enfranchised women, this kind of symbolism at the seat of government was especially unwelcome.

Mary Garrett Hay of the National League of Women Voters was paraphrased in The New York Times of March 16, 192 2, as saying that “in this age, woman should be placed not below man, but side by side with him in any representation of civic virtue.”

Mayor John F. Hylan made it plain that his sympathies lay with opponents, even as he allowed the installation of the statue. He sponsored a hearing on March 22 before the Board of Estimate, whose jurisdiction over the matter was unclear, at which “Civic Virtue” was excoriated by speakers, including his honor.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

MacMonnies did himself no favors by explaining the idea that public service was best embodied by “the unspent strength of a young man” who “does not even see the temptation” at his feet. To suggest temptation's “charm and insinuating danger,” the artist said, “one thinks of the beauty and laughter of women: the treachery of the serpent coils of a sea creature wrapped about its prey.”

Despite the criticism, “Civic Virtue” remained in place, in part because politicians were leery of demolishing something on which $60,000 had been spent. It was left to George U. Harvey, borough president of Queens in 1941, to put Manhattan out of its misery. Discerning a kindred spirit, he welcomed “Civic Virtue” to Borough Hall that year, two months before Pearl Harbor.

“I have been kicked around for years, just as that statue has,” Mr. Harvey said. “I felt that he and I had so much in common that if he were over here, near my office, I could come out here sometimes and we could tell each other our troubles.”

Not everyone, it should be said, saw trouble in “Civic Virtue.” Told this week of the allegorical battle going on across Queens Boulevard, Yael Goldman, an asso ciate broker and manager at Nu-Place Realty, allowed: “I never noticed that. Twenty-four years I'm in this office.”

Ms. Goldman wondered whether it was fair to view the sculpture through the lens of contemporary standards. “Who are we to judge something that was once considered art?” she asked. “It was art. Everybody's view of art is different.”

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times A chain-link fence surrounds “Civic Virtue,” which is in a poor state of repair.