A Herd of 1960s Concrete Horse Sculptures Are Restored in Manhattan
In 2021, an equine emergency was declared at an apartment complex on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Repairs to a water main required ripping up a playground studded with 18 pigmented concrete horses created in the 1960s by the Italian-born sculptor Costantino Nivola. The creatures were sawed off at the legs and hauled into protective limbo in basement storage.
They are now back on their feet, largely thanks to the New York firm Jablonski Building Conservation, which has helped stabilize and repair hundreds of landmarks, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the United States Capitol. Mary Jablonski, the company’s founder and principal, says that of all her assignments over the years, the Nivola horses are “one of the top” in the rankings for sheer charm.
Nivola, a prolific creator of murals and sculptures for civic, residential, and institutional buildings, crafted the chubby, smiling herd for the Stephen Wise Towers, a public housing compound. (It now serves as Section 8 subsidized homes, through a public-private partnership between the New York City Housing Authority and PACT Renaissance Collaborative.) Nivola also supplied two pyramids, a faceted figure, a geometric bas-relief, and a sgraffito black-and-white mural for the Wise Towers. The horses, despite some erosion over the years and vandalism to their muzzles, attracted people of all ages for sunbathing or taking imaginary rides.
photo by: Ola Wilk
Jablonski Building Conservation approximated the original layout designed by sculptor Costantino Nivola, who also created the sgraffito mural in the background of this photo.
When Jablonski first saw the legless, faceless horses in storage, she felt confident that she and her team could repair them. “There’s always a way” to undo damage, she says. Edward G. FitzGerald, a senior associate at her firm, tracked down three fiberglass horses that Nivola had created in the 1970s for a school in Indiana.
Using these Midwestern cousins, Jablonski’s team created molds for reproducing the Wise Towers’ missing body parts. Bolts and rebar connect the new components to the 1960s bodies. The project, funded by PACT Renaissance Collaborative and completed in 2024, has won numerous awards, including from Docomomo, the International Concrete Repair Institute, and the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
This spring, on a breezy Saturday, I see one horse at the Wise Towers serving as a steed for a lifelong resident named Ruben G. He tells me how he played there as a kid, and how glad he is now to have the sculptures repaired, reinstalled, and secured “for the next generation.”
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