(Bicycle Boy), (sculpture).

(Bicycle Boy), (sculpture).

Wood, Thomas, sculptor.

Rufo, Nazzarino, stone cutter.

H. C. Wood Monuments, fabricator.

(Bicycle Boy), (sculpture).

1896. Relocated 1930, 1956 and 1992.

Approx. 42 x 30 x 21 in.

(On front bottom of sculpture:) NORMAN

Norman VanKirk, wearing shorts and knee socks, stands in front of his bicycle, with his proper right leg crossed over his proper left leg.

Portrait male -- VanKirk, Norman -- Child

Architecture -- Vehicle -- Bicycle

H. C. Wood Monuments, 6400 Baltimore Avenue, Lansdowne, Pennsylvania 19050

Formerly located Wood family home, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania 1956-1992.

Formerly located H. C. Wood Monuments, 6400 Baltimore Avenue, In backyard, Lansdowne, Pennsylvania 19050 1930-1956.

Formerly located Fernwood Cemetery, Lansdowne, Pennsylvania

The sculpture was created as a gravemarker for Norman VanKirk, a young boy who used to bicycle from Philadelphia to Atlantic City (New Jersey) and who died after a bicycle fall. The sculpture originally marked the boy's grave at Fernwood Cemetery (Lansdowne, Pennsylvania). "The Bicycle Boy" statue became a local folk legend and was featured on the monument company's letterhead in the early 1900s. Visitors to the cemetery were known to chip the headstone to take pieces home. For awhile, the sculpture was enclosed in a protective glass case, but in 1930, to avoid further vandalism, the sculpture was removed and relocated to the H. C. Wood Monuments shop in Lansdowne. It remained there until 1956, when it was moved to the Wood family home in Wynnewood.

In 1992, the sculpture was returned to the monument shop and restoration efforts were undertaken by employee Nazzarino Rufo, who rechiseled and recut the eroded monument. IAS files contain copy of an article from Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 5, 1992.

Save Outdoor Sculpture, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia survey, 1993.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 5, 1992, pg. B2.

The information provided about this artwork was compiled as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture database, designed to provide descriptive and location information on artworks by American artists in public and private collections worldwide.

Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, P.O. Box 37012, MRC 970, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012

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