4. A Giant Captain America Statue
Shoppers going in to grab one of the innumerable home products on sale at Bed Bath & Beyond may be surprised to see a 13-foot-tall bronze Captain America statue upon entering Liberty View Industrial Plaza. Captain America is so tall, his shield reaches into the mezzanine level of the building’s atrium. He holds his iconic star shield aloft with his left hand, with his right hand clenched into a fist. On the top of the bronze plinth are the words “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn,” a line from the 2011 film Captain America: The First Avenger. In this modern era, it seems rare for any statue to arrive without controversy and this one was no different.
The Brooklyn-based sculptor David Cortes, of Cortes Studio, was commissioned by Marvel to make the design for the 75th Anniversary of Captain America, the comic book character created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941. Cortes, a native Brooklynite, is known for the figurines he’s made for Marvel and DC Comics. The one-ton statue was cast in Asia by the company Comicave and unveiled at the 2016 San Diego ComicCon. 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 Prospect Park for two weeks. Marvel fans came en masse and in costume to the rain-drenched ceremony, but other parkgoers complained about the perceived commercialization of the public space. Afterward, Captain America went on display in front of Barclays Center for about a month and a half.
Additional controversy over the statue was rooted in Captain America’s origins. In the comic books, his alter ego Steve Rogers is from the Lower East Side and was the child of Irish immigrants. The film, and more recent comics, shifted Captain America’s origins to Brooklyn. Purists of the comic books protested that the statue should rightfully be in Manhattan. The sculpture was then gifted by Disney, the parent company of Marvel to Liberty View Industrial Plaza in the fall of 2016. Ian R. Siegel, Senior Project Manager at Salmar Properties says that the sculpture needed to find a permanent home in Brooklyn and they felt that the 1918 former U.S. Navy building “was the perfect home.” He adds that a lot of Marvel fans of all ages come by to take photographs with the sculpture.