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Echo Park's Lady of the Lake On the Move
The Lady of the Lake, Spring 2010 (Heather Parlato/LAist)
If you're a regular visitor to Echo Park Lake, you may wonder if that statue of a woman you're used to seeing in one place came to life and moved herself to a new locale. Well, no such fairy tale to tell today; the "Lady of the Lake" was picked up and moved as part of a massive clean-up project going on at the park.
"Sculpted in the Art Deco style by artist Ada Mae Sharpless, the statue’s official name is 'Nuestra Reina de Los Angeles' (Queen of the Angels)," notes Historic Echo Park, though, of course, most folks know her by her nickname, "Lady of the Lake." The statue was commissioned in 1934 as part of the Works Progress Administration program.
The Eastsider L.A. explains a little background on the 35,000-pound statue's location: T
his is the not the first time the 14-foot high statue has disappeared from public view. The statue sat in the park’s storage yard for about 15 years to undergo repairs before it was finally restored and return to public view in 1999. However, since a concrete-block pump house had by then been built in her original location at the tip of a peninsula, the restored statue was installed on the east side of the lake near the boathouse. As part of the lake clean up project, the pump house will be removed and Lady of the Lake will be returned to her original location.
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