A historical landmark in the ‘City of Fountains,’ known as the William Volker Memorial Fountain, sits near the Kansas City Country Club Plaza, featuring five sculpted figures. But, after vandals struck, only three of those figures remain intact.

Now, the city faces a potentially hefty price tag to repair the fountain.

An unidentified suspect removed the arm and fingers of one of the structures, and the leg of another, Kansas City Parks & Recreation Director Chris Cotten said in an interview with The Star. The statue was defaced on May 19th.

“In this particular instance, I would say that because this fountain had a high brass (and) copper content, it was vandalized for scrap, for money,” Cotten said. “That’d be exactly what I think the reason is for this.”

Cotten said there would be “no other reason” to deface the statue.

“We don’t have these issues with artwork that’s not made of, doesn’t have a brass or a copper content,” he said.

The fountain was created in the 1950s by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles, according to the Millesgården Museum in Sweden.

The five-figured statue was one of Milles’ last pieces before his death, and depicts St. Martin of Tours, a patron saint of France, as its central figure, according to the Parks & Rec website. St. Martin is surrounded by four other figures, including a beggar, a faun and two angels.

The beggar and the faun were the two figures damaged, President of the City of Fountains Foundation Mark McHenry said in an interview with The Star.

The fountain was dedicated on September 20, 1958, and was created as a memorial to William Volker, a prominent Kansas City philanthropist, according to the City of Fountains Foundation. It originally sat in Frank A. Theis Park, but was moved to its current location in the 1990s, according to Parks & Rec.

‘It could be substantial’

The damage to the statue won’t be cheap to fix, Cotten said. They have reached out to the Millesgården Museum in Sweden to see if it could aid in fixing the statue. Cotten hopes the museum has the original molds that the statue was created with.

“So whether we can get our hands on molds or replicas of the molds and melt them down and re-pour them, or figure out a way to get a 3D scan so we can replicate it, that’s all kind of what we’re working on right now,” Cotten said. “But I don’t have any definitive answers because we haven’t heard back from Sweden yet.”

The City of Fountains Foundation is helping Parks & Rec with the project, President of the City of Fountains Foundation Mark McHenry said. A donation page on the City of Fountains website allows anyone to donate to the fountain’s repair.

Since the team doesn’t have access to the stolen parts of the statue, there is currently no estimated cost to the project, McHenry said.

“I will say it could be substantial,” McHenry said. “Which is not a number, it’s just the fact that this is a bit of a challenge.”

Currently, there is no time frame for repair. McHenry said it will be completed “as soon as possible, but that’s easier said than done.”

This isn’t the first time a statue has been defaced in Kansas City. More than two years ago, the Children’s Fountain in North Kansas City faced a similar fate. Plaques were stolen from the fountain and had to be recreated with a fiberglass material made to look like brass, Cotten said.

“So it has no scrap value, and those haven’t been messed with since we replaced them,” he explained.

McHenry recalled another instance a few years ago when a statue of an Osage woman was stolen in the Northland. Police were able to recover the pieces of the statue, and it was welded back together.

“There is precedence for this,” McHenry said. “The big difference here, of course, is we don’t have the pieces.”

Meanwhile, the criminal investigation into the vandalism is continuing.

A case detective for the Kansas City Police Department is working on gathering and processing evidence regarding the crime and “remains hopeful we will generate some leads,” KCPD spokesperson Alayna Gonzalez said in an email to The Star.