7. A 13-foot Captain America Sculpture can be found next to Industry City

Captain America statue at Bed Bath & Beyond Liberty View Industrial Plaza Brooklyn
Captain America Statue.

Inside the Liberty View Industrial Plaza—located adjacent to Industry City in a building which once made up part of the larger Bush Terminal—is a 13-foot-tall bronze Captain America statue, stretching all the way up to the mezzanine level of the building’s atrium. The statue features Captain America holding his iconic star shield up to the ceiling in his left hand while his right hand is clenched in a fist. Etched into the bronze plinth on which the statue stands atop are the words “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn,” a phrase taken from the 2011 film Captain America: The First Avenger. Brooklyn-based sculptor David Cortes of Cortes Studios was commissioned by Marvel to make the statue’s design for the 75th anniversary of Captain America—originally created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. As a native Brooklynite he is known for having made figures not only for Marvel but also for DC and other toy companies. The statue was cast by the company Comicave and unveiled at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con.

The original plan was to tour the statue around the country, but the idea was met with unexpected resistance. “All of a sudden, there’s all this red tape,” says Cortes. From Comic Con, the statue moved to Brooklyn and was on display in the Children’s Corner at Prospect Park for two weeks. Though many Marvel fans came out en masse to watch the statue’s unveiling, many park goers complained to the local media about how the statue was leading to the commercialization of the public space. Soon after, it was moved to a plaza in front of Barclays Center where it stood for about a month and a half. In the fall of 2016, the statue was gifted by Disney, Marvel’s parent company, to Liberty View Industrial Plaza where it remains today to greet shoppers and passersby alike.