A life-sized statue of former President Benjamin Harrison went up in flames early Sunday morning in Indianapolis, just 11 days after it was unveiled along a pedestrian corridor in the city's Old Northside neighborhood. The fire was reported at about 1:30 a.m. on September 27, and it reduced the 3D-printed likeness to ruin before investigators could determine who was responsible.
The statue stood along the pedestrian corridor connecting Delaware and Pennsylvania streets, according to the Indianapolis Star. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has opened an arson investigation, per a case report cited by the paper. Charles Hyde reported the statue's destruction to police and described the fire as a senseless act of vandalism.
The statue depicted Harrison, the nation's 23rd president, standing five feet six inches tall. It was made of polymer and took more than 1,200 hours of 3D printing to produce, the result of a collaboration between the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site and the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University Indianapolis, the outlet's report notes.
A Short-Lived Debut Tied to a National Milestone
The statue had only just made its public debut on September 16, unveiled as part of Constitution Week and tied to the nation's 250th-birthday celebrations. Its installation marked the latest phase of improvements to the site's grounds and pedestrian corridor, upgrades that were part of a broader $6.8 million project completed in 2023, the same account states.
The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site describes itself as a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to maintain and preserve the Harrison home, collections and grounds as a museum and memorial, according to the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site. Benjamin and Caroline Harrison built the home in 1874-1875, and Harrison lived there until his death in 1901 except during his years in the Senate and the presidency. The home became a full-time museum open for daily tours after a 1974 renovation, and the site says it has drawn national attention for digitizing its collection, including a range of nationally significant 3D materials.
Rebuilding After the Loss
The Presidential Site is now raising $15,000 to replace the destroyed statue and plans to put those funds directly toward rebuilding it, the newspaper's report indicates. No details on the replacement's design or timeline have been finalized in public reporting.
The destruction echoes a case from Wichita, Kansas, where a bronze, life-sized statue of Jackie Robinson was stolen from a public park and later found burned in January 2024, as reported by the Delaware County Times. That statue, cut off at the ankles and deemed damaged beyond repair by police, had cost the youth baseball nonprofit League 42 about $50,000 when it was installed in 2021. Investigators there conducted more than 100 interviews with help from arson specialists, and surveillance video had shown two people hauling the sculpture away to a truck that was later found abandoned. League 42 said it planned to install a replacement modeled exactly on the original.
No suspect, arrest or motive has been identified in the Indianapolis case, and it remains unclear whether investigators will draw any connection between the two incidents. For now, the loss lands as a setback for a site that has leaned on painstaking digital fabrication work to bring its 19th-century subject into the present.
