Concrete Beasts Will Be the L.A. Zoo’s Keepers

It took more than 50 years, but several concrete elephants and lions that guarded the gates of a long-defunct private zoo will soon be greeting visitors again, this time at the Los Angeles Zoo.

The life-size figures were donated by two men who had been their keepers for several decades. On Monday, most of the sculptures were reunited, brought by trailers into the zoo, where they will be incorporated into new gates to be built within the next five years.

“This is probably the best place possible for them,” Los Angeles Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo said of the 13 statues. “I really feel that a bit of the city’s soul is being returned to us.”

The animals’ journey to their new home was a long one, and not without detours.

For years, they stood atop the majestic gates of the Selig Zoo, founded by motion picture pioneer William Selig in 1915. Selig commissioned the statues from Italian sculptor Carlo Romanelli in 1910. The lions and elephants welcomed zoo visitors until the park, at what is now Lincoln Park east of downtown, closed in the mid-1940s.

After that, the statues changed owners several times.

Many ended up in the back of an amusement park at the former site of the Selig Zoo. In 1967, amusement park owner Larry Davis saw the steel gates and offered to buy them from a crane operator, who had kept them because he never got paid to move them for a subcontractor.

The operator offered him not only the gates, but also 12 statues.

Davis bought them for $1,200, he said, not knowing what to do with the lifelike sculptures.

“I’ve always known they had some historic value to them,” said Davis, who kept the statues, though he had numerous offers from interested buyers through the years.

And Archie Fiechter, a man who according to his children always loved eccentric objects, was given one of the sculptures--a 3,000-pound elephant--by the owner of an Ontario rental business. In 1987, Fiechter took the elephant home and placed the concrete giant in his front yard. It became a landmark for neighbors and visitors alike.

“He’s very emotional about it, but we feel the elephant is coming back home,” said Charlene Kale, Fiechter’s eldest daughter.

Early this year, zoo volunteer Gene Arias found the statues and decided to return them to their former role as watchful guardians of a zoo entrance.

Mollinedo had become interested in the old entrance of the Selig Zoo and thought the animals--wherever they were--would make for a great new entrance to the Los Angeles Zoo.

Two months of detective work followed, as Arias took a few clues from a book about Los Angeles and began to track down the missing statues. He went to Ontario, asked at gas stations and soon heard from locals about “the elephant house.”

In Fontana he followed other clues, and soon found Davis’ storage facility with a dozen gray treasures in it.

“It was a blast,” Arias said of the months he spent searching for the statues.

He praised the willingness of both Davis and Fiechter to donate the artwork to the zoo.

At a news conference Monday, community leaders and zoo personnel thanked the men and their families for the donation.

“What a proud moment this is for Los Angeles,” said City Council President John Ferraro. “It is a rare occasion that artwork almost a century old can be found and restored so that children today and in the future can enjoy a part of Los Angeles history.”

Some of the statues have been severely damaged and will need to be restored. Some of the lions, which weigh about 800 pounds each, have no heads or tails, and some elephants lack trunks.

The statues are appraised at $13,500, but that does not include their historical value.

The restoration will cost about $150,000, said Deborah Ives, president of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., the zoo’s fund-raising arm.

The zoo, which opened in 1966, kicked off a fund-raising effort Monday, hoping to collect enough money for the statues’ restoration.

For their donations, both families received lifetime zoo memberships, so they can come and visit their longtime companions whenever they please.