5 February 2018
Photo by Jenn Brown
Photo by Jenn Brown. Smithsonian Magazine:
43 ghostly effigies of presidents past crowd together in the tall grass. Some of the 18-to-20-foot busts have crumbling noses. Tear-like stains fall from the eyes of others.
The busts are all that remains of Virginia’s Presidents Park, a now-defunct open-air museum where visitors could once walk among the presidential heads.
Presidents Park first opened in nearby Williamsburg in 2004, the brainchild of local landowner Everette “Haley” Newman and Houston sculptor David Adickes.
The park went belly-up due to a lack of visitors in 2010, doomed in part by location—it was hidden behind a motel and slightly too far away from colonial Williamsburg’s tourist attractions.