Our Favorite Things: The Spirit of Fort Myers

Things and places we love in Southwest Florida

Edison Park resident Lydia Black sheltered at home with family and friends during the seemingly endless storm that was Hurricane Ian on Sept. 30, 2022. On her first trip out of the neighborhood after, she saw a pile of rubble where the neighborhood’s iconic statue, The Spirit of Fort Myers, once stood.

“I think I might have been one of the first people to see her,” Black says. “She brought a whole set of emotions to me.”

(An older view of the entrance to Edison Park, from the Uncommon Friends Collection at Digital FGCU)

Originally thought to have been destroyed, the statue, often called “Rachel at the Well” by locals, was found to have been nearly snapped in half when hit by debris during the Category 5 storm. As Rachel was put back on her pedestal with her torso leaning forward, awaiting a proper restoration, “bent but not broken” became the byword to describe her.

A Legend is Born

Black and her husband own Winged Foot Title in Fort Myers, and for years she was the director of Lee County’s Alliance for the Arts. As someone who appreciates public art and loves her hometown, she loves the lore behind the statue, and the way that it sets the entrance to the historic district.

“She’s important to the story of Fort Myers,” Black says.

The statue’s story began with a young James Newton, developer of Edison Park. He hired German sculptor Helmuth von Zengen to sculpt a Greek goddess at the entrance to his new neighborhood, directly across from Thomas and Mina Edison’s winter home. Von Zengen worked on site, a tarp keeping the statue hidden as he created the statue from wire and cast stone.

(Conceptual drawing from Newton’s sales literature for Edison Park)

It was said at the time that the sculptor was protecting a proprietary process, but the tarp also kept it a secret that Greek goddess in question was naked. According to James Newton’s book Uncommon Friends, some of Mrs. Edison’s friends had taken a flashlight and inspected the sculptor’s work. She summoned him to her home and asked him to tell von Zengen to put some clothes on the lady.

(The Edisons and James Newton, from the Uncommon Friends Collection at Digital FGCU)

The sculptor “about tore his hair out” Newton recalled in his book, but he added a layer of veiling. The Edisons, Newton, several elected officials, and about 500 citizens came out for the dedication on April 7, 1926.

Hard Times and a Halloween Costume

Rachel has been through some hard times in the past, as high schoolers painted her in various team colors. The city’s beautification committee hired late artist D.J. Wilkins to touch up the statue in 1983, and she received another glow-up in 2017.

After Ian, while the city tried to figure out what to tackle first and how to fund it, Rachel was wrapped in orange plastic netting. And there she stood. For more than a year.

(Above and below, Lydia Black with and as The Spirit of Fort Myers, pre-restoration)

Lydia Black says her 2023 Halloween costume wasn’t a deliberate attempt to get progress moving on the restoration of the statue, but her way of saying that the whole community was still “bent but not broken.”

“It was to recognize that we were still struggling,” she says, with many community members still fighting with insurance companies, and many with tarps on their roof or still in need of serious home repairs, especially in the lower-income areas of the city.

This spring, a team from Rosa Lowinger & Associates and Ciociola Conservation began the painstaking process of not only putting Rachel back together but making her more structurally sound than she was before.

(City councilman Liston Bochette posted this image to Facebook on April 27.)

City Councilman Liston Bochette put a stunning photo of the restored statue on Facebook on April 27 with the note, “Glad you are home.”

Black says having Rachel back on McGregor Boulevard, shining and beautiful, is a powerful booster to the community’s psyche, although it doesn’t mean there still aren’t hard tasks ahead.   

“She is the spirit of Fort Myers,” Black says.

Helmuth von Zengen

Tom Hall’s excellent site about Southwest Florida arts has a terrific description of Helmuth von Zengen’s process for creating the statue here.

Before coming to Fort Myers, von Zengen was in Beaverton, Mich., where he built a monument to fallen soldiers in the Great War in 1925. He also created works for the owner of Dow Chemical. You can see his work here and here.

The sculptor later moved to Tampa, where he stayed until his death in 1961 at age 76. He created several notable statues in the city, including one of the pirate Gasparilla, which residents restored in 2002.

(Von Zengen working on something big in fall 1954, Tampa Tribune)