Yesterday I shared the new pictures of the construction of War Memorial from the early 1950s. First thing to be done was to knock down the old buildings of the Kimball Tobacco Co. Sitting on top of the smokestack  for that company was the statue of Mercury. I could write about the statue but instead I’ll just copy Arch Merrill’s article from the Sept. 12, 1959 issue of the Democrat & Chronicle. I will add that Mercury was raised again to the top of the Aqueduct Building in 1973 where he still is today.

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Thousands Saw Downfall of the Copper God

Mercury’s Resurrection Certain, But It’s Still Far Off

By Arch Merrill

On Sept. 19,1951, downtown Rochester was treated to its greatest free show in years. Thousands craned their necks from every vantage point to watch the downfall of a god.

It will be eight years next Saturday, but it seems like yesterday, that Mercury, the copper statue that was a civic landmark, came down to earth after 70 years on the Rochester skyline.

The crowds began to gather in the morning. They watched expert steel workers ready a 160-foot crane and boom for the descent of the Messenger of the Gods.

At noon three workmen were lifted by derrick to the statues base atop the chimney of City Hall Annex. All afternoon the crowd watched the workmen secure the lines to support Mercury on his downward journey and with acetylene torches methodically cut away the 700-pound, 21 foot statue from its base.

A little after 4 o’clock Mercury was free and began his slow descent. A guy rope snarled around a crossbeam of the boom and for a few minutes Mercury was suspended in mid-journey.

At 4 15 pm. the greenish copper god touched earth for the first time in seven decades. Auto horns blared and the crowds cheered. Then they went home. The big free show was over. Remember?

* * *

That night the dethroned Messenger of the Gods lay like a homeless derelict at the base of the chimney he had crowned so long. The next day he was unceremoniously carted off to a city building in Edgerton Park and shortly was dumped into lonely exile at the Port of Rochester warehouse at Charlotte.

There he has languished for eight years. He—and lots of us—are waiting for the day when Mercury will come out of retirement and return “home”—uptown beside the river.

His comeback is assured. The master plans for the sprawling new Civic Center include a place for Mercury atop a 66 foot pylon in a little landscaped promenade on the west bank of the Genesee about halfway between the Court Street dam and the Troup-Howell bridge. In his old perch he reared his head 182 feet above the level of the street.

He won’t be coming back tomorrow or the day after. The promenade is the last item on the vast Civic Center agenda. It is safe to guess that old Mercury must spend at least another five years in Charlotte.

* * *

This chronicler likes to think that he may have had something to do with saving Mercury from the scrap heap. I am not the crusading type but I did beat the drums in many a Sunday “Save Mercury” column after it was known that the statue must come down, a victim of the War Memorial project.

It became obvious that the status of 1881 vintage would not harmonize with the severe lines of the War Memorial or the Civic Center buildings. So I confined my appeals to finding a new home for the copper god.

Many homes were proposed, —on a gate house at the Court Street dam, atop Cobb’s Hill, on the Powers Building and other downtown sites. One firm thought Mercury would make a nice advertising sign. Fancy a Greek god becoming a huckster.

Fortunately the Friends of Mercury included Mayor Peter Barry and the native-son architects for the Civic Center, Don Farager and Allen Macomber. So a home was found for Mercury in the spacious Civic Center layout.

* * *

Now you are saying, “Why is that Merrill rehashing all this old stuff now?” Well, for one thing, there’s the anniversary date this week.

And in the eight years since Mercury’s comedown, many persons who never knew or maybe never heard of the landmark, have moved here. Children have grown up who never knew the guardian of the skyline.

So, for their benefit and because I don’t intend that Mercury shall be forgotten, I am repeating a bit of the history of the statue.

In 1880 William S. Kimball, manufacturer of tobacco and cigarettes, completed a massive, fortress – type factory around a courtyard on the “island.” bounded by the Genesee River, the Erie Canal and the Carroll – Fitzhugh mill race.

Kimball wanted an eye-catching symbol to adorn the tall chimney of his new plant. He commissioned his brother-in-law. Guernsey Mitchell, to design a statue of the god of Greek mythology taking flight. Mitchell made a plaster model of Mercury in a shed at Park Avenue and Rowley Street.

The model was turned over to the Water Street metal firm of John Siddons Sons. There the copper plates that comprise the statue were riveted together. When Mercury was raised to his sentry post on top of the Kimball chimney, he was held in place by a copper rod. The sculptured face of Boreas, the fierce God of the North Wind, formed the base on which the rod was fastened.

On Jan. 29, 1881 Mercury, young, strong-limbed and clean, was unveiled and hoisted to his pedestal amid the cheers of a shivering crowd and the strains of “Hail Columbia” played by the 54th Regiment Band.

The building changed hands and played various roles. Other landmarks disappeared and brash newcomers thrust their heads above him, but the copper god remained as constant as the North Star, an earth-bound courier poised for flight. Rochester came to cherish Mercury as a tradition, a symbol and an old and familiar friend.

The Kimball factory, which in the 1880s produced a million cigarettes a day, including “Sweet Caporels,” and which employed 1,200 hands, became in the 1890s a division of the American Tobacco Co. After W. S. Kimball’s death, it was purchased by Cluett-Peabody for a collar factory. After 20 years that Industry quit Rochester and for a time the structure was vacant.

Then in 1924, George Eastman, ardently desiring a Civic Center over the river, squelched a move to build a new City Hall in Broad Street by buying the deserted factory and leasing it to the city for a nominal sum for office use.

The building was Rochester’s City Hall Annex until it was razed, chimney, Mercury and all, in 1951 to make way for the War Memorial. It housed the Public Library prior to erection of the Rundel Building, which, from the beginning, was intended to be a part of the Civic Center set-up.

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For 78 years Mercury watched the changing face of Rochester. He saw the canal boats depart from the Clinton Ditch and then heard the screech of subway trains in its bed. He sew the horse traffic yield to the darting motor cars In the streets below. In a new order, he peered, a bit enviously, at the machines that whirred like great birds above his head.

Eight years ago he came down. In those eight years an amazing transformation has been, and is being wrought, in downtown Rochester. What will the Sentinel of the Sky-line think of it all when be returns?