COLUMBIA, S.C. — Columbia's development is impacting the art scene on Taylor Street. The famously giant fire hydrant is getting removed. It's arguably one of the most photographable spots in the city.
Soon the statue will return to what it was more than 20 years ago, a parking lot.
“The property’s got a new owner and the new owner wants to develop the property, and that’s it," Blue Sky, the artist behind the Busted Plug and several other art pieces in the Midlands said.
The piece was initially installed as an anniversary gift for the Federal Land Bank in 2001. Sky said he decided that a larger-than-life fire hydrant was the perfect present.
“It’s an urban thing, you know? It’s like a big vacant lot and you see it’s an urban idea," Blue Sky said. "It’s absurd. It was intended to be funny. It’s supposed to be funny it pop art."
Sky has 15 other art pieces around Columbia, three of which are within feet of each other. Busted Plug goes along with a mural, Tunnel Vision, a couple of feet behind it that he completed in 1975.
“So, it looks like whatever, So, it ran into the wall like a meteor or something like that," Blue Sky said.
It took 3 years total to assemble the 675-thousand-pound statue that goes 14 feet beneath Taylor Street. Crews started working to take the statue apart on Friday.
“We thought it was completely strange, completely weird and completely wonderful," Stanley Dubinsky, a 30-year Columbia resident, said.
Dubinsky is one of the residents looking to keep the statue where it is. He even signed a petition for it.
“I think it’s been here for 20 years. It's public art. It belongs to the community, " Dubinsky said. "It’s something that we all own whether we stop and stand in front of it or whether we just drive by."
In its last days standing, there’s plenty of driving by and standing in front taking pictures.
“I’m not from here originally, but this statue brought me to this city,” one tourist said.
There’s no final decision on where the statue will go yet.