gifts your city has received from other cities or countries

[SpongeG]

i was watching a show the other day and apparently Canada has gifted New York City with a christmas tree somewhere and it is decadently decorated with fancy crystal and lights baubbles etc. by one of Canada's top interior designers - brian gluckstein... in some New York City Park.

which made me think has your city ever been gifted with anything? permanent or temporary?

I can think of new york - the statue of liberty from paris france

Burnaby - Vancouver (BC) got some Japanese totem poles from Japan

[jeicow]

Ottawa, Ontario receives 100,000 tulip bulbs every year from the Dutch Royal family as a symbol of thanks for the Government of Canada's generosity while the family was in exile during WWII. More specifically, when Princess Juliana was going to give birth to her daughter Margriet, the Government of Canada passed a law making Princess Juliana's room at the Ottawa Civic Hospital extraterritorial so that the infant would have exclusively Dutch, not dual nationality. As a result, we have the Ottawa Tulip Festival every year. Not as cool as the Statue of Liberty but it's the Netherlands and Canada for frig sakes.

[Buckeye Native 001]

In Orange County, we get exurbanite Angelenos.

[Jeff_in_Dayton]

Yes, believe it or not, Dayton was given a replica of a Roman mile marker from its sister city of Augsburg, which used to be a Roman city and apparenlty still has some Roman relics. The replica marker is on the Courthouse square.

(actually the marker sounds small, but is actually a statue of sorts).

[LostInTheZone]

I'm pretty sure the fountain behind the Philadelphia Art Museum was a gift from fascist Italy.

[raggedy13]

Vancouver apparently got a mace from London. Here's what it says on the City of Vancouver's website...

The City of Vancouver Mace was presented by the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City of London, England, in 1936 as a gift on Vancouver's 50th birthday. Made from Canadian silver and mercurial gilded, it is 1.5 m ( 5'3") long and weighs 18 kg (40 lb). It is an exact replica of the City of London's mace, except for the stem (the London mace stem is wood). The mace is symbolic of City Council's authority and is displayed in the Council Chamber during regular Council meetings.

These are the only pictures I could find of it...





Looks a lot bigger than I originally expected. I first thought it would be like a dinky wand type thing, but 1.5 m is rather large and in charge. I wonder how much you could sell that thing for on ebay?

[kool maudit]

we got this metro entrance from paris.

[hydrobond]

I believe Cincinnati has a statue of Romulus and Remus from some city in Italy.

After checking Wikipedia, it seems it was sent over by Benito Mussolini.

[Stanzmastertron3000]

The Province of Nova Scotia has donated the annual Christmas tree to the Boston Common as an enduring thank-you for the relief efforts of the Boston Red Cross and the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee following the Halifax Explosion of 1917.

/wikipedia

[Steely Dan]

chicago recently received 106 headless and armless nine-foot-tall human statues from poland as a gift.

"The new public sculpture installation - Chicago's largest - is titled "Agora," after the Greek word for "marketplace." It's the work of Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz, who has had a close relationship with Chicago ever since the city mounted the first American retrospective of her work in 1982.

The work, valued at $10 million, is a gift from the artist, Poland's Ministry of Culture and a private foundation in Poland. The $750,000 cost of its shipment from Poland, installation and upkeep has largely been underwritten through public subscription, authorities said."

here's a link to some very nice pictures of this large installation: http://www.flickr.com/photos/only-co...kanowicz/show/

[Attrill]

Mussolini was really fond of giving gifts. Chicago has a Roman column in Burnham park given by Mussolini to commemorate a flight of boat-planes from Italy to Chicago. Balbo Dr. was named after the commander of the flight. The inscription on the column reads:

"FASCIST ITALY BY COMMAND OF BENITO MUSSOLINI
PRESENTS TO CHICAGO
EXALTATION SYMBOL MEMORIAL
OF THE ATLANTIC SQUADRON LED BY BALBO
THAT WITH ROMAN DARING FLEW ACROSS THE OCEAN
IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR
OF THE FASCIST ERA"

[Comrade Reynolds]

Oooh, the fascist era. How classy! That Benito was a stud!

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by jeicow

Ottawa, Ontario receives 100,000 tulip bulbs every year from the Dutch Royal family as a symbol of thanks for the Government of Canada's generosity while the family was in exile during WWII. More specifically, when Princess Juliana was going to give birth to her daughter Margriet, the Government of Canada passed a law making Princess Juliana's room at the Ottawa Civic Hospital extraterritorial so that the infant would have exclusively Dutch, not dual nationality. As a result, we have the Ottawa Tulip Festival every year. Not as cool as the Statue of Liberty but it's the Netherlands and Canada for frig sakes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_F...l_%28Ottawa%29



---


Also, I didn't even know about this thing untill I visited Washington DC last summer.
It's next to the Iwo Jima memorial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Carillon

[tayser]

Tianjin Garden in Chinatown - a gift to kick off the sister city relationship, and I have a feeling Argyle Square ('Piazza Italia') is in the same boat owing to the Milanese sister city relationship.

I know we gave St Petersburg a park bench (Hah!) or something for its 300th b-day bash a few years ago too.

[Shawn]

We've got so much Japanese stuff from Kyoto in Boston that I dont know where to begin, but I suppose the most obvious are the Japanese magnolias and cherry trees that line streets like Newbury and Commonwealth. The MFA, while not city-run by any stretch of the imagination, has the largest collection of Japanese art in the world outside of Japan, much of it being donated as gifts from Kyoto and also from Dr. William Clark's private collection (Clark, a Massachusetts senator, president of Umass, and founder of Hokkaido University, is quite famous in Japan for his departing phrase, '"Boys, be ambitious!"). There are many small Japanese tea-houses tucked here and there throughout the Back Bay, all of which are gifts from Kyoto or Hokkaido.

Also, God willing, Boston will be receiving the "gift" of one Matsuzaka Daisuke by Friday night.

[HomeInMyShoes]

The royal family, well Queen Elizabeth, bequethed a pair of replicas of Trafalgar Fountain to Canada. One is in Ottawa, ON in the park across the street from the Lord Elgin Hotel and one is in my hometown of Regina, SK.

[keninhalifax]

^ Really? Wow! I pass by that fountain all the time and never gave it second thought.

[elsonic]

we've got this bell from Japan


a lion from Lyon


and this chunk of the Berlin Wall

[the pope]

but here's the real question, has a country ever re-gifted something from another country?

[MolsonExport]

Montreal built a $2 million park somewhere in Shanghai.
Conceived by the former Botanist mayor of Montreal, Bourque.