Vigo County Historical Society

Lost limestone lions were local landmarks

In recent months, members of a number of organizations in Terre Haute have enjoyed a program entitled, "Lost Art of Terre Haute," given by David Buchanan, executive director of the Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley. In this program, he speaks about and shows slides of two objects which evoke fond memories for many.

Two carved lions were prominent and familiar figures in local history. In the early 1880s, Preston Hussey asked marble and stone cutter John Weber to carve two lions to be placed on the stoop of his new residence on North Seventh Street, now the site of Indiana State University campus. The house stood about where a driveway into the campus used to be, just north of the old Elks building.

The lions were chiseled out of one piece of limestone. The bill of sale, which is on file at the museum, states that the lions were delivered to Hussey on April 22, 1881.

The method of payment becomes bit complicated, but interesting. Some of this is purely conjecture, but after examining three original bills of sale, there appears to have been some "horse trading" involved between Hussey and Lorenz Kussner, who owned the Palace of Music at 213 Ohio St.

It seems that when Hussey ordered the lions, Kussner ordered a carriage stepping stone for the front of his residence. It was to be "larger and handsomer than any in the City at this date." The lions were to cost $150 and the carriage steps $20.

Kussner must have owed Preston Hussey $200, because he paid for the lions, and the steps, and gave Hussey an additional $30 in cash. The final result was that John Weber received from Hussey a piano deemed to be worth $200 which was his payment.

In the early 1900s, the Hussey home was torn down and the Hussey block, a large modern building of store rooms, was built. The lions must have been considered significant at the time because they were the only objects saved when the house was demolished. They were placed on top of the storage building at the corners, noticed by very few.

When the warehouses were demolished in 1938. SP Kaatzenbach purchased the lions from the company that was razing the building and presented them to Indiana State Normal School. They were placed in front of the Administration Building, which is now the site of the Quad. The Administration Building was torn down in the mid-1950s and the lions vanished.

On March 20, 1940, the "Indiana Statesman" ran a story about the lions, which included this incident. The lions vanished briefly one night and no one knows exactly where they went, but when they were returned, their lips were painted red and ’40 was painted on the side of one of them. It was rumored at the time that the hat passed at Rose Poly to pay for the sandblasting to take off the paint.

John Weber was a prominent carver of limestone and marble in Terre Haute. Originally from Germany, he settled here in 1867. In addition to his well-known lions, Weber was comissioned to carve the stone work over the entrance to the original Indiana State Normal School building and did many of the beautiful stone monuments at Weldon Cemetery.

A handsome, gray-marble picture frame carved by John Oswald Weber is on display in the Vigo Room at the museum. His photograph is in the frame. Other artifacts of Weber’s which can be found at the museum are the wooden mallet he used to chisel stone, a small model of the famous stone lion statue, photographs of members of his family, as well as several bills of sale.

The photograph shown here of one of the lions was given to the museum by Susie Dewey. Standing on either side of the lions are architect Bill Hasskarl, who designed the War Aid Depot formerly on North Fruitridge, and Robert Dewey.