Neptune’s Treasure: A $5,000 Reward for the Return of Statue Parts

Wanted: King Neptune’s marble hands, one arm and two legs. $5,000 reward. No names named. No questions asked. Contact Morynne Motley, Palos Verdes Estates.

The torso, fierce-looking head and other parts of the larger-than-life Carrara marble sculpture have all been found by Motley, but she won’t rest until she locates all the other missing pieces of this 100-year-old artwork.

The city-owned classical Italian statue was once the centerpiece of the Neptune fountain in Malaga Cove Plaza. Motley, an art lover and part owner of one of the buildings in the plaza, is determined to put the sea god back together to help restore “the city’s cultural heritage.”

“It was only through Mrs. Motley’s efforts that the city has recovered the head and various parts of the Neptune statue,” City Manager James Hendrickson said. “Finding them is a real testament to her efforts.”

Motley also is leading a campaign to restore the fountain and beautify the plaza itself, a project that has city approval--largely as a result of her efforts, officials say. Money for the work is coming partly from the city and partly from a plaza beautification committee she founded.

The 19th-Century white marble fountain in the center of the plaza parking lot is a copy of the famous bronze Neptune fountain in Bologna, Italy. The three-tier replica, by an unknown Italian artist who worked near Bologna, is decorated by dolphins, mermaidlike Nereids, cherubic figures called putti, sea shells and children’s faces. It is topped by the heroic figure of Neptune.

The Neptune figure and basin were imported from Italy more than a half century ago, donated to the city by the plaza’s developers and erected in Malaga Cove Plaza in 1930.

Over the years, the fountain fell victim to neglect and corrosion. Chemical reactions caused by the mixture of automobile exhaust and other atmospheric pollution turned thin layers on the marble surfaces to a sugary crumble that pitted and eroded.

The plaza’s original marble Neptune also was badly damaged by vandals, losing fingers, genitalia and the tip of his nose. The fountain’s pipes and structural steel were so weakened by rust that the heavy figure toppled and broke in 1968.

The head, torso and other broken parts were stolen after being stored carelessly in an unlocked shed, Motley said. The broken statue was replaced by a smaller duplicate Carrara marble figure, which stands in the plaza today.

When Motley first started looking for pieces of the original marble statue last January, she found nothing was left. By early February, she was demanding that city officials help her in the search.

“If we don’t look, of course we won’t find it,” she wrote to city officials. Motley hopes to have the statue rebuilt and displayed in the history museum being developed in the old Malaga Cove Intermediate School.

Her reward strategy appears to be working. The head turned up last April after she personally posted a $5,000 reward for its return, city officials reported. A former city employee who collected the reward said he had taken the head “for safekeeping.” Torrance police found the torso and other parts in an old garage not long afterward.

The first reward worked so well that she decided to offer a similar amount for the rest of Neptune’s missing parts. “Have you seen King Neptune’s hands, arm and legs? $5,000 reward,” read Motley’s reward notice, which also said no names would be taken, no questions asked.

Technically, the statue belonged to the city, but the City Council recently voted to donate the remains to the Rancho de los Palos Verdes Historical Society, which plans to raise the money to restore the statue and display it in the new museum.

In the meantime, Motley is pressing her six-year crusade to clean up and beautify Malaga Cove Plaza, which is now used as a parking lot. The project calls for an overhaul of the fountain--including the installation of a new full-sized marble Neptune--raised brick walkways and landscaping of the parking lot and the plaza’s buildings.

Motley, who together with her husband owns one of the buildings that house plaza offices and shops, says she is appalled by how run-down the area has become.

In a November, 1987, memo to the City Council, she reported on a tour of the plaza. “Empty flower pots filled with trash, dead trees, broken pots, weeds . . . unwashed walkways, filthy trash bins, stagnant water, unplanted, weedy (flower) beds . . . peeling paint,” she wrote.

The list was long, accompanied by documentary photos she had taken. And the problems remain, she says.

Motley argues that the plaza is “an architectural jewel,” pointing out that it was planned by the city’s original developers in the 1920s, complete with the Neptune fountain. However, hard times hit in the 1930s and the plaza was never completed or landscaped as intended, she said.

As new buildings were added to the plaza after World War II, the Italian Mediterranean architectural theme was maintained. The plaza became the city’s commercial hub for a while, then fell into decline, she said.

Motley founded the Malaga Cove Plaza Beautification Project in 1987 to reverse this downward spiral. The first task was to get the city and the various property owners interested in restoring the city-owned fountain and plaza center strip.

The city has agreed to help restore the fountain, budgeting $30,000 for the work. Some of that money has been used to give the fountain a good scrubbing and to replace the rusting pumps and old plumbing.

There is a lot more work to do, Motley said. Three of the putti have been broken completely off; the fourth is damaged. A dolphin head is missing and there has been other surface damage to the marble figures.

A major overhaul will not come cheap, experts say.

Just to recreate the four putti in Carrara marble would cost $40,000, city officials estimate. Replacing the two-thirds scale Neptune with a full-sized replica of the figure in the Bologna fountain would cost up to $50,000 more.

Neither the city nor the beautification committee has decided exactly how much they will spend on the fountain, officials said. The estimated $150,000 needed for the rest of the plaza work--already approved “in concept” by the city--will be raised privately by the beautification committee, said insurance executive Jere Murray, the panel’s current president.

Should the effort succeed, he said, it will be due in large measure to Motley. “She’s the one that’s kept pushing us,” he said. “(She) got the project going.”