Toppled from Red Square, Lenin Rises Again on the Lower East Side

Lenin rises again.

Indeed, it somehow seems fitting, given the current political climate, that a statue of the Russian communist revolutionary would return to a Lower East Side rooftop. And so it goes.

Early Friday afternoon, workers were spotted hoisting the eighteen-foot, Soviet-era sculpture into place at 178 Norfolk Street. The copper tribute had been leaning on its side here since last September.

Michael Rosen and Michael Shaoul, co-owners/developers of the original Red Square, where the statue held court from 1994, reportedly own this walk-up tenement beside the Angel Orensanz Center.

Lenin was “toppled” from his longtime perch shortly after Dermot Co. purchased the 130-unit development for roughly $100 million. Red Square is no longer referred to as such, instead going by its address – 250 East Houston.

This 18-foot Lenin statue carries quite the history. It was originally commissioned by the USSR, but the implosion of that country in 1989 – the year Red Square was built at 250 East Houston – prevented its display. The developers of the property, Michael Shaoul and Michael Rosen, reportedly found it trashed in a backyard just outside Moscow and installed it five years later.