Busted Plug on the move: See Columbia’s iconic 40-foot fire hydrant being carried away

It’s not every day you see a 40-foot fire hydrant carried down the streets of downtown Columbia — or anywhere, for that matter.

The “Busted Plug” sculpture, an iconic piece of public art by artist Blue Sky, was moved from its longtime home on Taylor Street on Thursday.

Bucket truck crews had to lift up power lines as a flatbed carried the core of the hydrant along Taylor and Bull streets. Traffic backed up on all sides of the intersection around lunchtime, and cars honked as the sculpture made its way through the streets on the hot day.

The sculpture is being moved after a new owner purchased the property it has sat on since 2001. Sky, a well-known Columbia artist, also created the “Tunnelvision” mural on the building behind Busted Plug’s longtime spot.

The sculpture was gifted to the city as public property in 2012. Its future home is uncertain. It is being moved to a temporary location until the city decides where to display or store the sculpture permanently.

Lee Snelgrove is the arts and culture manager at Richland Library and is the former director of arts advocacy agency One Columbia, where he spent years working to bolster public art in the capital city. He was on the scene Thursday morning as crews hoisted the “Busted Plug” hydrant out of its longtime spot on Taylor Street and loaded it on a truck to be hauled to storage.

Snelgrove said “Busted Plug” has long been a notable piece of public art downtown, one that drew conversation and curiosity with its size and scale.

“It is iconic to Columbia,” Snelgrove said. “I’ve thought about that over the last few days and my whole career in public art. I think it is iconic for its scale. It is large, it is prominent. Whether people like it as an art piece, it is just ever-present in your experience in Columbia. Its scale is really part of what makes it an iconic piece.

“Hopefully it continues to have a long life as part of the Columbia landscape.”

Snelgrove added that there also is a certain whimsy to “Busted Plug,” which adds to its status as a long talked-about art piece in the capital city.

As noted by One Columbia’s public art directory, “Busted Plug” was unveiled on Feb. 18, 2001, in the 1400 block of Taylor Street downtown. The piece is four stories tall and weighs a whopping 675,000 pounds, per the directory, and it was designed with the strength to withstand a tornado. Sky proposed the piece to the city in 1999, and it took 14 months to complete, from the initial architectural drafting through construction.

On Thursday afternoon, Mayor Daniel Rickenmann said a site for relocation of “Busted Plug” has not yet been chosen, but he said he is hopeful it might find a home near the river. He said the city has some flexibility in terms of where the new site could be.

Rickenmann said that Finlay Park — long a rumored possible home for “Busted Plug” during relocation talks through the years — is not likely to be its next home.

Rickenmann, who is in his first term as mayor after a long run on City Council, noted “Busted Plug’s” prominence among the city’s public art inventory.

“I think it is a great piece of art and it is going to find a new home,” Rickenmann said. “Sometimes things have to move. ... I think we are going to find a great, prominent space for it and that, at the end of the day, people are going to be happy with it.”

The mayor said when “Busted Plug” does land in a new spot it will give the public a chance to celebrate the piece. Rickenmann said the hope is to make the fountain function of the piece operational once again.

At-large City Councilman Howard Duvall said he did not know where the art piece’s future home might be. However, he noted it was long a popular gathering spot on Taylor Street.

“I think it is an attraction,” Duvall said. “I have gone by Taylor Street at all times during the day and night, and there’s usually somebody out there taking a picture of themselves in front of ‘Busted Plug.’ So, I hope we find a good home for it that will be accessible to people visiting the city.”

Snelgrove said there have been off-and-on talks at the city for years about moving “Busted Plug.” He said he understands why it needs to be moved and that public art, after all, changes over time and is not sedentary.

Still, he said he wishes there had been more public conversation from the city recently about the ultimate fate of the 675,000-pound art piece, so that the public would know what is going to happen to the piece and feel like they were a part of the changes.

While it remains to be seen where the fire hydrant installation ultimately will end up, it has certainly been an indelible piece of downtown’s visual landscape for more than two decades and a wonder for residents and visitors alike. As noted by One Columbia’s public art directory, while at least two other cities in North America claim to have the world’s largest fire hydrant, “Busted Plug” is “taller than both structures by over 10 feet and heavier by many thousands of pounds.”