Gold Rush: A Look Inside the Independent Man’s Restoration Process

Photo via Getty Images/Kickstand

After months of restoration work, Rhode Island’s first gentleman — all fourteen feet and 1,400 pounds of him — is ready to head back to his perch atop the State House. After a crack was found in his marble base — experts think lightning may have been to blame — the Independent Man was taken down in December 2023 and brought to the R.I. National Guard’s North Main Street armory in Providence. There, conservator and Rhode Island resident Mark Rabinowitz, of EverGreene Architectural Arts, oversaw the restoration project. First, workers retouched the electroplating done in the 1970s when the Independent Man was removed for repairs. (The bronze statue was originally covered in gold leaf after being cast at the Gorham Manufacturing Company in 1899.) Then, using special instruments and a puff of air, they attached pieces of thin gold leaf to the statue with a curing agent called “size.” Now wrapped in his glorious, 23.75-karat-gold finery, the Independent Man is ready to head back to the top of the dome sometime this fall. His gleam should last for years, says Rabinowitz, who was honored to work on the iconic symbol of the state. “I went to RISD in the 1970s, and just as I was graduating, the news came out that this was going to be taken down and restored. I thought, ‘Oh, I wish I had known about that. I wish I’d been involved in something like that,’” he says. “So be careful what you wish for, because literally fifty years later, it turned out to be true.”   

Update: The Independent Man is returning to the top of the dome today, Dec. 18, 2024, via crane.