A mural proposed for downtown Scranton would pay homage to Nay Aug Park’s late elephants, depicting them free from the bounds of a zoo in a piece of public art that will also portray the city children who participated in penny-drive campaigns to purchase the pachyderms.
As proposed, the mural by artist Eric Bussart will feature the four elephants of the former Nay Aug Park Zoo — Queenie, Tillie, Princess Penny and Toni — as well as Joshua, Tillie’s companion donkey that lived with her at the city zoo from 1935 until the equine’s death in 1958. Plans are for the mural to adorn a wall under the Marketplace at Steamtown’s overhead bridge spanning Lackawanna Avenue, said Rose Randazzo-Pizzuto, chairwoman of the nonprofit Scranton Tomorrow’s Mural Arts Program. The targeted wall is on the Scranton Art Haus movie theater side of the street parallel to the marketplace’s post office location.
Artist Eric Bussart’s design for a proposed downtown Scranton mural paying homage to Nay Aug Park’s elephants. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)
“The underlying theme of this mural … is an unusual friendship and a message of unity,” Randazzo-Pizzuto said, noting Tillie and Joshua’s real lifelong friendship and the symbolism of the elephant and donkey in a political sense. “But the most important thing is the message of unity then becomes a message of freedom, and if you notice, those four elephants that are portrayed are free. They are portrayed in the afterlife and they are walking through a mystical, beautiful forest, because we know now — the past has taught us — that captivity of animals is not a good thing. But it brought us here, and it brought our community here.”
Businessman and developer John Basalyga, who owns the wall the mural would enliven, wanted the public art to include the children who fundraised for and so loved the elephants that are a part of Scranton’s history, she said. Basalyga confirmed as much Friday.
“I always have to understand what a mural is about and … I believe there’s a lot of messaging in artwork, and so I always ask a lot of questions,” he said. “When I was told that a group of children from our area got together and raised money and were able to do something as significant as purchasing an elephant, it could have been anything, but the fact that little kids got together and they accomplished the goal is just phenomenal.”
Basalyga wanted that to be represented on the mural because it’s “inspiring,” he said. “And I hope that kids say: ‘hey, if those kids were able to do it back then, we can do something too.”
A rendering of the proposed mural includes four children, with one pouring a jar of pennies into a larger jar held by two others that says “elephant fund.” The fourth child is depicted holding a copy of The Scranton Times. The newspaper organized in 1924 a coin campaign that, according to newspaper records, saw the children of Scranton and its environs raise more than $3,600 to purchase Queenie, the park’s first elephant, who died in 1935 at the age of 14.
“No campaign struck such a popular chord in families where there were children,” according to a May 3, 1935, Scranton Times article on Queenie’s death. “Orphans in institutions of the city and vicinity had coins given in their names so that they, too, should be among the owners of the elephant.”
The same article notes an estimated 25,000 people flocked to Nay Aug for “the first public reception of Queenie and her crowning as queen of the park.” She’s portrayed in the mural both among the three subsequent elephants to call Nay Aug home and individually, in a place of distinction among flowers with a crown over her head.
The four kids depicted in the mural are inspired by a June 1926 photo from the newspaper’s archives of those same children sitting atop Queenie’s back.
Tillie and Joshua were snapped by the Times photographer within a couple of minutes after their arrival in Scranton on May 31, 1935. Carl Neuffer, elephant trainer from the Benson Wild Animal Farm in New Hampshire, is holding Tillie by the ear, and Scranton Park Superintendent H.M. Kerber is holding Joshua. Standing alongside Neuffer is John Gallagher, of Nay Aug Park Zoo, who would have charge of Tillie. (TIMES-TRIBUNE ARCHIVES)
The newspaper also launched a drive following Queenie’s death to purchase Tillie, who arrived in Scranton with Joshua the donkey in late May 1935. A 1958 article on the occasion of Joshua’s death described their enduring bond, noting they were “the oldest pair at Nay Aug Park Zoo.”
“Throughout the past weeks, Tillie had been hovering over the little donkey like a great, gray guardian angel,” it reads. “Yesterday, the men at the zoo managed to coax her from the inside cage to the paddock outside. Then they removed Joshua on a canvas litter and placed him on the floor in the corridor outside.”
An ailing Tillie was euthanized at the zoo in 1966, at the age of 42, “releasing her from pain which she bore with a monumental patience,” according to newspaper records.
Princess Penny, Nay Aug’s third elephant purchased after drives spearheaded by the newspaper, was euthanized in July 1971, having been stricken earlier that year “with an undetermined malady.” Toni, the zoo’s last elephant, lived at Nay Aug from 1971 to 1989, when she was transferred to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
The mural, which officials hope to complete this year, honors all four pachyderms, their place in city history and “the fact that the elephants brought people together within our community,” Scranton Tomorrow Executive Director Leslie Collins said. “We feel it’s an interesting story of how animals and people connect.”
In addition to Scranton Tomorrow’s investment, Lackawanna County commissioners recently approved a $7,500 county arts and culture grant for the mural. County Arts and Culture Director Maureen McGuigan echoed praise for the proposed project Friday, describing it and other local murals as free ways to experience art with elements of “history or authenticity about where we live.”
Randazzo-Pizzuto, meanwhile, said officials are also working to add an “augmented-reality” element to the proposed elephant mural that visitors and residents would experience through their smartphones with the use of QR-code technology.
“You would be able to come to the mural live, and with your cellphone the mural will come to life on your cellphone,” she said.