Before they started sinking into the ground, the busts fashioned from concrete, plaster and rebar – was that Styrofoam poking through some cranial holes? – stood about twice the height of a basketball hoop. <\/p>\n
They each weighed at least five tonnes. Time has not been kind. <\/p>\n
Chester A. Arthur\u2019s entire jaw is missing. Ulysses S. Grant has lost a chunk of his right eyebrow. And Franklin D. Roosevelt was \u201cscalped\u201d in transit, the tour guide noted, by a Route 199 overpass.<\/p>\n
These commanders in chief weren\u2019t supposed to spoil. They were carved with patriotic love by a Texas sculptor who studied in Paris under a French modern master. <\/p>\n
They were the polished centrepieces of a US$10 million ($16.5m) park that in 2010 went bankrupt after six years. Not enough admirers wanted to see them back when they were pristine.<\/p>\n
Now the waiting list stretches into the hundreds. Demand didn\u2019t spike, their owner said, until the heads were rotting. <\/p>\n
Not that their misfortune attracted haters. Quite the opposite. <\/p>\n
In the wreckage, guests said they could see their country and themselves with more tenderness than judgment. \u201cThat one\u2019s me,\u201d a 20-something chirped at jawless Arthur.<\/p>\n
A local builder hired by the park site\u2019s subsequent owner loaded the busts onto trucks and escorted them 18km to another plot of land, where they’ve remained since. Photo \/ Max Posner, for The Washington Post<\/p>\n
Rodriguez didn\u2019t mull the symbolism when she learned about the spectacle on Facebook. <\/p>\n
Seeing spooky historical art, she figured, was a fun way to spend Presidents\u2019 Day weekend. Up close, though, the oddities stirred something familiar.<\/p>\n
She thought of the America she loved: her clients, who came from everywhere with stiff necks and bad backs. The nurses, teachers, soldiers and everyone else on her massage table, resting up to go at it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the imperfections, for me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The late sculptor, David Adickes, was an Army veteran who\u2019d wanted his stony visages to gleam. On an early-aughts trip to Mount Rushmore, he\u2019d contemplated the granite mugs of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln and thought: Why stop at four?<\/p>\n
Adickes, who died last year at 98, hoped the 42 statues he chiselled at his Houston studio would land in the nation\u2019s capital, he said on a 2022 podcast, but real estate was too costly. <\/p>\n
So in 2004, he and a business partner settled on a plot near Colonial Williamsburg, aiming to draw history buffs and stroller-pushing families. The Great Recession, overpriced tickets and poor marketing dashed that vision.<\/p>\n
Fred Schneider addresses Saturday\u2019s visitors to the current site, where there\u2019s now a waiting list. Photo \/ Max Posner, for The Washington Post<\/p>\n
After the busts went bust, a rental car company purchased Presidents Park and hired local builder Howard Hankins to help flatten it into a parking lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just couldn\u2019t see crushin\u2019 \u2019em,\u201d Hankins recalled.<\/p>\n
Instead, he loaded the abandoned dignitaries onto a fleet of flatbed trucks and escorted them (minus their pedestals) to his farm-slash-industrial dump. Storing them in a muddy field was meant to be temporary, he insisted. <\/p>\n
A presidential fanatic, Hankins envisioned building a new museum. But the 18km move alone cost him US$50,000, he said. A decade and a half later, the idea exists only on drawings.<\/p>\n
By 2019, Virginia photographer John Plashal caught wind of what was disintegrating on Hankins\u2019 out-of-the-way hectares. <\/p>\n
He pitched himself as a tour guide to the introverted contractor, and the two hatched a fresh back-road attraction. <\/p>\n
A few times per year, guests can pay US$28.35 to marvel at what the website deems \u201cneglect and decay\u201d. <\/p>\n
As word spread on social media, Ozzy Osbourne stopped by. So did producers of a certain hit zombie series (though they filmed nothing on-site). And the heads just kept deteriorating.<\/p>\n
The presidential busts\u2019 popularity grew after they began decaying. Some visitors say they can see themselves \u2014 and the US \u2014 in the imperfections. Photo \/ Max Posner, for The Washington Post<\/p>\n
\u201cNow they look like they\u2019ve got leprosy,\u201d Plashal told the Saturday crowd. \u201cIn the summer, they all have an active wasp nest in their eyeballs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet the place, he continued, has only grown more popular. Nearly 600 people showed up over the weekend, coming from as far as Germany and the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n
So what, he asked the group, is the rationale for rolling in now?<\/p>\n
Up shot the arm of 10-year-old Evelyn Price.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they are falling apart,\u201d the Norfolk student offered. \u201cBut, um, life is kinda like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mess is part of our heritage, her mother added, so wading through muck to engage with the past felt right.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica is really, really good at getting things very, very wrong,\u201d mused 41-year-old Treloar Price, a clinical psychologist. \u201cAnd then working hard to try to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The behemoth noggins reflected the transience of American power to Doug Tempest, a 46-year-old Navy veteran from Richmond.<\/p>\n
Andrea Cote turned Saturday\u2019s tour of the sculptures into a history lesson of sorts for her daughter, June. Photo \/ Max Posner, for The Washington Post<\/p>\n
Dictators overseas have clung to power for decades, but the US, so far – though its current leader has riffed about a third term – no president has defied the Constitution or the will of voters to stay in the White House. <\/p>\n
Every four years, a new victor can shake things up, while the old Oval Office occupant\u2019s influence tends to fade.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the superpowers that our country has is we can change direction,\u201d Tempest said.<\/p>\n
For Caren Bueshi, a 62-year-old retired teacher from Naples, Florida, witnessing the sculptures sag into the dirt conjured what she feared the nation was losing. <\/p>\n
Constitutional literacy, for one. Recent reports of federal agents detaining immigrants with the right papers and clean criminal records disturbed her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re forgetting the foundation,\u201d she said, wandering past Jackson\u2019s splintering mane. \u201cIt\u2019s a challenging time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt always is,\u201d interjected her mother, 91-year-old Pat Duke, clutching her arm. \u201cFrom the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mum leaned right. Daughter leaned left. But they didn\u2019t want to get into politics. The nonagenarian looked at the presidents and saw men. She saw mortality.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life is getting short now,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I\u2019m just enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few heads over, Andrea Cote, a 44-year-old consultant, tried to turn the eerie scene into a history lesson for her 9-year-old daughter, June.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is Chester A. Arthur missing his jaw,\u201d she said, pausing in front of the gaping mouth. The rebar inside looked like rusted braces without teeth.<\/p>\n
\u201cScary,\u201d June said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Thomas Jefferson was the one who didn\u2019t like to publicly speak,\u201d Cote deadpanned.<\/p>\n
Jokes aside, the derelict skulls touched her. So many families braved the chill that day, she noticed, for a glimpse at American history, no matter what shape it was in. They were interested. They cared. They were coming together.<\/p>\n
So Cote smiled when a fellow tourist with a fancy camera approached.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you squat right here,\u201d he told her kid, \u201cyou can get a picture of the sun coming right through his mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n
June grabbed her mum\u2019s phone and aimed it just so.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoa!\u201d she squealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSee,\u201d he said. \u201cNow there\u2019s something positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before they started sinking into the ground, the busts fashioned from concrete, plaster and rebar – was that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[125659,442,498,499,500,1244,160400,177,160396,110359,1770,149451,501,156,2740,75927,12856,160399,24176,26477,3025,111,139,96740,69,1118,160401,384,4397,160398,160397,75745,223,3040,1337,100175,102],"class_list":{"0":"post-288701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-apparent","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-beauty","14":"tag-blackened","15":"tag-celebrate","16":"tag-cheeks","17":"tag-chin","18":"tag-concrete","19":"tag-crumbling","20":"tag-design","21":"tag-entertainment","22":"tag-former","23":"tag-frostbite","24":"tag-george","25":"tag-grime","26":"tag-hundreds","27":"tag-leaders","28":"tag-most","29":"tag-new-zealand","30":"tag-newzealand","31":"tag-nose","32":"tag-nz","33":"tag-of","34":"tag-peeling","35":"tag-people","36":"tag-sculptures","37":"tag-sooty","38":"tag-streaked","39":"tag-sunburn","40":"tag-the","41":"tag-us","42":"tag-victim","43":"tag-washingtons","44":"tag-with"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}