East Village Lenin Statue

You are looking at a piece of history that spent years watching over the East Village from a rooftop. This eighteen-foot tall bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin was commissioned by the Soviet government in the early nineteen-eighties, intended to stand as a monument to the leader of the Russian Revolution. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early nineties, the statue was never unveiled in its home country. Instead, it was abandoned and left to sit in the backyard of a dacha outside Moscow, effectively forgotten until two New York real estate developers discovered it while working on a property project in Russia. They recognized the artistic and historical oddity of the piece, purchased it, and brought it back to New York City to crown their new apartment building on East Houston Street, which they had aptly named Red Square.