City to put the old Prudential naked-guy statue in an Allston park

First a tot lot on Beacon Hill got a bronze statue of a turtle (since moved into the shade so it no longer burns little kids). Now Smith Playground in Allston will be getting the 27-foot-tall "Quest Eternal" statue of a naked man reaching for the stars, or perhaps a towel, that was posed in front of the Boylston Street side of the Prudential Center until 2014.

The Boston Arts Commission reports it's accepted the statue as a gift from Pru owners Boston Properties and will install it at Smith Playground, 235 Western Ave.

Donald DeLue's statue stood with an eternally pained face outside the Pru for 47 years, until the Pru's owners put it in storage so they could expand the mall's space.

This is not the first time a local statue has shifted around the city.

The starving-horses statue that now sits at Congress and D streets in the Seaport was originally placed on the Common.

The large lollipops mobile that once moved in the wind outside 100 Summer St., near South Station, now sits on Ruggles Street, near Shawmut Avenue, in Roxbury.

A statue of Robert Burns (and his dog, Luath), was uprooted from the Back Bay Fens in 1975 and stuck incongruously in Winthrop Square downtown. With much of the square being replaced by a skyscraper, it's now slated to return to the Fens.

Photo originally posted by the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism. Posted under this Creative Commons license.