A Return to Form for the King Neptune Statue

Maybe he should have used his spear to defend himself.

During his nearly 70 years on the Palos Verdes Peninsula he has reacted with stone-faced stoicism at being splashed with paint, black ink and motor oil and at having his head yanked loose, his feet stolen and his fingers chopped off.

Of course, thugs keep swiping the sharp-tipped trident he cradles in one arm too.

But things are looking up for King Neptune, the landmark statue that stands atop a fountain near the center of Palos Verdes Estates.

City leaders are completing a $103,000 repair job on the marble fountain, a three-tiered replica of the famous 1563 bronze original in Bologna, Italy.

Artisans have spent more than a year replacing missing cherubs, restoring damaged mermaids and patching chipped dolphins. Once a final coat of sealant is applied to its basin, the fountain’s 32 nozzles will spray water for the first time in years.

“I always thought if we put our minds to it, we could save it,” said Morynne Motley, whose 12-year campaign to preserve the statue once included posting of a $5,000 “no questions asked” reward for the return of stolen pieces.

Carved by an unknown artist about 200 years ago, the fountain depicting the god of the sea stood in the courtyard of a villa north of Venice, Italy, for more than a century. It was disassembled and shipped in the 1920s to the United States--where it was sold for $1 in 1926 by the Bank of Italy to early developers of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

In 1930 the fountain was placed in what is now the parking lot of the Malaga Cove Plaza to represent “international goodwill.”

But goodwill has not always been shown King Neptune.

He had become a target for vandals by the 1940s, when “the cost to the city of removing paint, lacquer oil, ink, etc. has run into hundreds of dollars a year,” according to one account from that period.

Editorialized a local newspaper in 1947: “Apathy toward the protection and maintenance of such a valuable work of art is almost criminal.”

By the 1950s Neptune was being almost routinely defaced by teenagers who painted it in the colors of rival schools.

In the 1960s a woman removed Neptune’s genitalia with a baseball bat. When the rest of the statue started to crumble due to corrosion in 1969, officials substituted a stand-in--this time including a strategically placed fig leaf.

Neptune’s trident was stolen in 1986, and the replacement spear was swiped a year later. A short time after that, the original Neptune figure that had been stored since 1969 in a city shed also disappeared.

Two of the fountain’s four cherubs were defaced in 1990. Three cherubs were ripped from the fountain and a mermaid’s face was hacked off the next year.

The carnage prompted Motley and her husband, Robert, to post the $5,000 reward in 1992 for the return of stolen pieces of the fountain. Within days Torrance police had found Neptune’s torso stuffed in a milk crate in the backyard of a home they were raiding. Two weeks later, an Orange County man returned the head and collected the $5,000.

It was later determined that the man was a former Palos Verdes Estates city employee who said he took the head “for safekeeping” after other workers allegedly hacked marble fingers from Neptune’s hand until only one digit was left. The remaining digit, according to one account, was positioned in the city shed so it offered a salute in the direction of City Hall.

Motley and others raised about $300,000 to spruce up the area around the statue with trees and a brick walkway in 1997. That prompted officials to allocate cash to refurbish the city-owned fountain.

Restoration expert Steve Colton of Glendale coordinated the repair effort. He used old photographs to create models that Italian artisans could copy in carving replacement cherubs--called puttini--from Carrara marble.

Chips from the fountain and missing pieces of the mermaid-like Nereids and dolphins were filled with marble patches shaped from clay molds. The patches were glued down and then stained to match the existing stone, Colton said.

Yellow and green moss and black mold was scraped from the fountain’s basin, and missing nozzles replaced during the yearlong project, he said. And the work attracted plenty of attention.

“One man from [an unidentified high school] class of ’48 stopped by to say his class had painted Neptune orange. Another person said the class of 1967 painted it blue. It was painted orange again in 1976 for Halloween,” said Colton.

Kirsten Benson, an assistant engineer for Palos Verdes Estates’ public works department, said Colton and his crew have sought to securely reassemble the fountain in hopes of thwarting would-be thieves. In the meantime, she said, city police are closely watching King Neptune.

Indeed, a television camera linked to a monitor at police headquarters is continuously aimed at the fountain. Police Chief Timm Browne said even more stringent security measures--such as museum-style motion detectors--are being considered for the landmark.

The surveillance camera has been catching a steady stream of passersby who stop to admire the refurbished fountain.

“Everyone’s glad to see it fixed. Every dime spent on it was well worth it,” said Nerses Tumanyan, a Palos Verdes Estates market owner.

Area resident John Marcone said water may not be good enough for the refurbished Neptune.

“Champagne should come out of the fountain first,” he said with a laugh.