Few People Know This Iconic Statue In Michigan Was Actually Imported From Norway
By Emily Tieman|Published January 05, 2023
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Emily Tieman
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Emily Tieman is a lifelong Michigander and has a love for locally owned small businesses. She is a freelance writer for Only In Your State and has her own vintage content creator business.
Michigan’s Motor City is known as the automobile capital of the world and the birthplace of Motown music. But the Comeback City is also known for being tenacious, strong, and never giving up. The best symbol of this feeling would be the iconic statue in Detroit, Michigan, the Spirit of Detroit. But few people know that the monument was actually imported from Norway.
The Spirit of Detroit Statue is located in the heart of downtown Detroit, Michigan in front of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.
The budget for the statue was $58,000, which is equivalent to over $400,000 today. Fredericks created a scale model of the statue and shipped it to Oslo, Norway, where it was constructed.
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The 26-foot-tall statue was cast in Norway and given an acid wash to give it a beautiful green shade which nature usually takes years to create.
The statue took three years to complete, and then the tricky part began: transporting the behemoth statue across the Atlantic Ocean. A framework made of wood and steel was designed, and the statue was wrapped in burlap to protect it during transport. The statue with the framework weighed 12 tons and was placed below deck on a freighter to travel 4,800 miles across the sea, through the Great Lakes, and into the Detroit port. Then it was lifted onto a truck and driven to Downtown Detroit where two cranes were used to rest it on its marble base.
One seal is for Wayne County and the other is for the city of Detroit. There is also a Bible verse engraved into the marble.
Improvements were made to the icon in 2007, and it is still a symbol for Detroit citizens. Nowadays you’ll sometimes find the statue wearing a Detroit Red Wings, Lions, or Tigers jersey.
