Believe It or Not (Second Series) #10

The narrator states that no one knows anything about the statue in the Bronx River. The mystery was unraveled around 1980. Sculptor John Grignola originally carved the granite statue of a Civil War Union soldier for the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) burial plot in Woodlawn Cemetery. However, the statue was damaged (i.e., a broken visor and a chipped foot), and the G.A.R. rejected it, instead commissioning a similar metal version.

The granite statue was purchased by John B. Lazzari, a partner in a company that built monuments and mausoleums for Woodlawn Cemetery and placed on his nearby home's property on the west bank of the Bronx River. Lazzari built a wooden foot bridge across the Bronx River for his personal convenience, but when the public began using his private bridge, he became angry and destroyed the bridge, leaving only the granite pier support standing in the middle of the river. He later, with some friends, transported the granite statue to the pier. The statue was restored (most likely during a Monuments Restoration Project that lasted from 1934 to 1937). After the unstable statue toppled into the river in 1964, it was relocated, and now resides in the front yard of the 18th-century Valentine-Varian House, which is the home of the Bronx County Historical Society.