The Mystery of the Missing Plaque (Gone But Not Forgotten)

In 1992, someone noticed that the bronze plaques were missing from the the four sides of the base of the P.T. Barnum Statue in Seaside Park. Where had they gone. Residents quickly notified the Historical Collections of the Bridgeport Public Library.

Questions arose. Where did the plaques go? And does anyone remember what did they actually look like? When the four plaques were missing, we had to search through postcards,photographs and files housed in the Historical Collections to try to figure this out.



Guess what we found out after looking at the postcard. The plaques were not the only thing that were missing from the statue. This vintage postcard from 1908 shows two urns on each side of the statue. The urns seemed to have disappeared not long after this postcard was published. Later postcards and photographs showed the urns absent.


The Barnum statue itself was cast in 1887. Barnum had posed for the statue, and afer his death in 1891, the statue was placed in Seaside Park.


The next question that arose was: wasn't there wording on the statue base?


Here is the answer to what the plaques looked like. The two side plaques were Greek funeral preocessions, and the back plaque was a laurel wreath. The front plaque, hower, looked like this:


"Pro benefiis exento vivet" is what was inscribed on the plaque. The motto was Latin, but a loose translation is: "For his benefactions, he will live forever."

When P.T. Barnum died in 1892, in a newspaper account it was said that Barnum said,"Let me be interred quietly, I've had enough show during my life." The statue stands as a monument to the great showman of the world.

A committee of residents collected money so that replicas of the plaques that surrounded the Barnum statue in Seaside Park were once again placed on the statue. The original bronze plaques were never found.