New York's Lenin Gets Toppled

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, I've been to dozens of cities -- most in the former Eastern Bloc -- where statues of Lenin have been taken down. I never thought I'd count New York among them, but as of Monday night, the city no longer has a statue of the man who led Russia's 1917 revolution.

New York's sole Lenin is a special case: It's privately owned by Michael Rosen, a former NYU professor, developer and investor, and his erstwhile partner Michael Shaoul. The two ran a small trading company, Oscar Gruss & Son. They weren't typical Wall Streeters, though. They installed the Lenin statue in 1994 on top of a red-brick doorman building in the East Village known as Red Square, the Soviet leader's outstretched hand pointed toward the financial district. "The Lower East Side had been for many decades a place of true political thought," Rosen explained. "So we hoisted Lenin to the top to wave to Wall Street."