Statue of Harrison Gray Otis

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Statue of Harrison Gray Otis

The bronze statue of Harrison Gray Otis stands in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. It was created by Paul Troubetzkoy as part of the Otis Group, which also included a newsboy and a soldier. Troubetzkoy won the design competition in 1918, and the statue was installed in 1920.

The soldier figure has been missing for decades, and the newsboy was stolen for scrap metal in March 2024. The theft was spotted by Anne-Lise Desmas, a Getty Museum curator and art historian, who had a Louvre colleague visit the park to view Troubetzkoy’s work and found the newsboy missing. Investigators think the thieves posed as city workers to avoid questions.

The model for the newsboy was Andrew Azzoni, whose father worked as a waiter at a restaurant Troubetzkoy frequented. In 1921, a scene from Buster Keaton’s Hard Luck was filmed at the statue, when all three figures were still there. The statue sits near Wilshire Boulevard and has been involved in car crashes and, more recently, damage during the June 2025 Los Angeles protests.