Patience and Fortitude, the lions who guard the main branch of the New York Public Library, are always a hit with folks who take my Grand Central and Times Square Walking Tour. They also rank among the sculptures that New Yorkers love most. But it wasn’t always so.
When the lions first went up, almost exactly 100 years ago, observers were unimpressed.
When they were still new arrivals, passers-by complained that they were “squash-faced” and “mealy-mouthed and complacent.”
“We do not want square-jawed lions,” one man declared in a letter to the editor of The New York Times. Another letter-writer, who said that they looked like “a cross between a hippopotamus and a cow,” dismissed them as “monstrosities.”
And that was after the sculptor had trimmed their manes because people had complained that the lions were too hairy.