| Fremont Troll | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Steve Badanes Will Martin Donna Walter Ross Whitehead |
| Year | 1990 |
| Type | Sculpture |
| Dimensions | 5.5 m(18 ft) |
| Location | Seattle |
| 47°39′03″N122°20′50″W / 47.650955°N 122.34728°W | |
| Owner | City of Seattle |
The Fremont Troll (also known as The Troll, or the Troll Under the Bridge) is a public sculpture in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States.
The Troll is a mixed media colossal statue, located on N. 36th Street at Troll Avenue N., under the north end of the George Washington Memorial Bridge (also known as the Aurora Bridge). It is clutching an actual Volkswagen Beetle, as if it had just swiped it from the roadway above. The vehicle has a California license plate. [1] Originally, the car held a time capsule, including a plaster bust of Elvis Presley, which was stolen when the sculpture was vandalized. [2] [3]
The Troll is 18 ft (5.5 m) high, weighs 13,000 lb (5,900 kg), and is made of steel rebar, wire, and concrete. [4]
The Troll was sculpted by four artists: Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter, and Ross Whitehead. [5] [6] The idea of a troll living under a bridge is derived from the Scandinavian (Norwegian) folklore.
The artists have copyright to the Troll images. They have sued businesses that use its image commercially without written permission. [7] Postcards, beer, and other products approved by the artists are commercially available, and use is free to non-profit organizations. [8]
In 1990, the Fremont Arts Council launched an art competition for the area under the bridge with the intent to construct hostile architecture to deter the presence of "rodents, mattresses, beer cans, [and] guys sleeping" there, believing that the solution to the issue was "having a piece of art" instead. The piece, built later that same year, easily won the competition, and was meant to become a cultural icon of the city from its conception. [9] The vote in favor of the "funky" troll was also motivated of concerns about increased development in Fremont, including numerous large apartment buildings and an office park, urbanizing the largely residential neighborhood. [10]
The construction of the troll provoked immediate complaints from homeless people who previously lived under the bridge, and in 1991, just a year after it was erected, neighbors funded powerful floodlights to deter squatters and "late-night revelers" from acts of vandalism targeting the troll's beard and hair, [11] as well as the continued dumping of trash around it by homeless people who used to live there. [12] Despite the intent of the arts council, the sculpture has periodically been the target of vandalism, [9] although local activists have made efforts to clean graffiti on a regular basis, [13] and the city of Seattle has swept homeless encampments adjacent to the sculpture following repeated drug overdoses in January 2019; [14] from January to mid-May alone, the city received 28 complaints about needles or homelessness within a block of the sculpture. [15]
In 2005, the segment of Aurora Avenue North under the bridge, running downhill from the Troll to North 34th Street was renamed "Troll Avenue" in honor of the sculpture. [16] In 2011, the Fremont Arts Council licensed a Chia Pet based on the Fremont Troll that was sold at a local drug store chain. [17] >
The stairway leading to the top of the sculpture was rebuilt in September 2023 using funds from the Move Seattle levy; the Troll is planned to be surrounded by more vegetation planted by volunteers the following month. [18]
The 1999 romantic comedy film 10 Things I Hate About You features the Fremont Troll in a scene between Joseph Gordon-Levitt's and Larisa Oleynik's characters. [19]
The 2015 video game Life is Strange features the Fremont Troll partway through the first episode, in which the player can find a picture of the protagonist, Max, and two of her friends from her time living in Seattle, climbing on the sculpture. [20]
The seventh and final season of the ABC fantasy-drama series Once Upon a Time features a fictionalized version of the sculpture. Filming for the series took place in Vancouver, Canada, as such, a replica of the sculpture was built for the show. In the season's fourteenth episode, "The Girl in the Tower", a backstory for the sculpture is revealed, which includes references to the 1982 children's book The BFG . [21] In 2016, the Chicago rock band Majungas released "The Fremont Troll" off their Seattle Rock album. [22] [23]
In 2022, the Seattle Kraken introduced Buoy, a mascot said to be the Fremont Troll's nephew. [24]
In 2022, the Seattle Repertory Theatre produced "Lydia and the Troll" a play that heavily featured the Fremont Troll. [25]
Dale Chihuly is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is well known in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture".
Fremont is a neighborhood in the North Central District of Seattle, Washington, United States. Originally a separate city, it was annexed to Seattle in 1891. It is named after Fremont, Nebraska, the hometown of two of its founders: Luther H. Griffith and Edward Blewett.
The Seattle Center is an entertainment, education, tourism and performing arts center located in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Constructed for the 1962 World's Fair, the Seattle Center's landmark feature is the 605 ft (184 m) Space Needle, an official city landmark and globally recognized symbol of Seattle's skyline. Other notable attractions include the Pacific Science Center, Climate Pledge Arena, and the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), as well as McCaw Hall, which hosts both the Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet. The Seattle Center Monorail provides regular public transit service between the Seattle Center and Westlake Center in Downtown Seattle, and is itself considered a tourist attraction.
Ivar Johan Haglund was a Seattle folk singer, restaurateur and the founder of Ivar's.
The Fremont Bridge is a double-leaf bascule bridge that spans the Fremont Cut in Seattle, Washington. The bridge, which connects Fremont Avenue North and 4th Avenue North, connects the neighborhoods of Fremont and Queen Anne.
The Aurora Bridge is a cantilever and truss bridge in Seattle, Washington, United States. It carries State Route 99 over the west end of Seattle's Lake Union and connects Queen Anne and Fremont. The bridge is located just east of the Fremont Cut, which itself is spanned by the Fremont Bridge.
The Fremont Arts Council (FAC) is a community-run organization that supports arts and artists. The Council resides at the Powerhouse in Fremont, Seattle, Washington with members throughout the city.
Gerard "Gerry" Tsutakawa, son of artist George Tsutakawa, is an accomplished Pacific Northwest sculptor. A studio apprentice for his artist father for 20 years, Gerry created his own first commissioned work in 1976. In the same studio where his father worked, he continues to design and fabricate anything from small studio bronze pieces to large public art fountains and sculptures.
Waiting for the Interurban, also known as People Waiting for the Interurban, is a 1978 cast aluminum sculpture collection in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. It is located on the southeast corner of N. 34th Street and Fremont Avenue N., just east of the northern end of the Fremont Bridge. It consists of six people and a dog waiting for public transportation — specifically, the Seattle-Everett Interurban. While the interurban railway ran through Fremont from 1910 until 1939, it stopped on Fremont Avenue rather than N. 34th Street, which the statue faces.
Root Sports Northwest, sometimes branded simply as Root Sports, is an American regional sports network owned by the Seattle Mariners. Headquartered near Seattle in the city of Bellevue, Washington, the channel broadcasts regional coverage of sports events throughout the Pacific Northwest, with a focus on professional sports teams based in Seattle and Portland. It is available on cable providers throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska and nationwide on satellite via DirecTV.
The Statue of Lenin is a 16 ft (5 m) bronze statue of Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. It was created by Bulgarian-born Slovak sculptor Emil Venkov and initially put on display in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1988, the year before the Velvet Revolution. After the revolutions of 1989 and dissolution of the Soviet Union, a wave of de-Leninization in Eastern Europe brought about the fall of many monuments in the former Soviet sphere. In 1993, the statue was bought by an American who had found it lying in a scrapyard. He brought it home with him to Washington State but died before he could carry out his plans to formally display it.
Hai Ying Wu is a Chinese American sculptor best known for his firefighter memorials. and his memorial commemorating the Auto-Lite Strike in Toledo, Ohio.
Richard Sternoff Beyer was an American sculptor from Pateros, Washington. Between 1968 and 2006, Beyer made over 90 sculptures.
The Wall of Death is a permanently sited public art installation located under the University Bridge in Seattle, alongside the Burke-Gilman Trail and NE 40th Street in the University District. It was designed and built by Mowry Baden and his son, Colin, in 1993.
The Seattle Kraken are a professional ice hockey team based in Seattle. The Kraken compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference. The team was founded after the NHL approved a proposal by Seattle Hockey Partners to grant an expansion franchise to the city of Seattle, and the team began play during the league's 2021–22 season. They play their home games at Climate Pledge Arena.
The Statue of Liberty, or Lady Liberty, is a replica of the Statue of Liberty installed at Seattle's Alki Beach Park, in the U.S. state of Washington. It was installed in 1952 by the Boy Scouts of America and underwent a significant restoration in 2007 after repeated vandalism had damaged the sculpture.
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