Zoroaster statue in New York

Madison Square Park in Manhattan in the neighborhood of Murray Hill was peppered with a Red-White-Blue exhibition with giant art displays. Although it was announced that a life size marble statue of Zoroaster is visible there, one wondered whether this would be a meaningless chase until one located the Appellate Court Building and the statue of Zoroaster atop the edifice at the corner of Madison Avenue and 25th Street.

Life size marble statue of Zoroaster

The building enthrones several other law-givers including Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Confucius, Manu, Moses, etc as also statues of Wisdom, Justice and Force on the façade. The statue of Zoroaster was placed there in the 1950s to represent Persian Law. Standing at the cornice, the statue of the torchbearer is a reminder of judicial uprightness and the principles of arbitration, bail, representation by a lawyer and execution of wills, all of which are said to be introduced in Zoroaster’s time, way before the Greco-Roman empires claimed the base for a legal system. The statue was sculpted by Edward Potter whose best work is the pair of marble lions known as the Fortitude Lions in front of the New York Public Library.