Vermont officials have recovered an antique weather vane stolen in the last century, solving a 41-year-old cold case.
Modeled after the first steam locomotives, the five-foot-long copper piece was installed atop the White River Junction train station in 1910. It remained perched there until it was stolen in 1983 amid a rash of such thefts from buildings in northern New England.
“I don’t think anyone was expecting it to come back,” said Judith Ehrlich, historic preservation officer for the Vermont Agency of Transportation. “It was definitely a surprise.”
The weather vane’s whereabouts were a mystery until last month, when it was consigned to the Sotheby’s auction house in New York.
The Art Loss Register, an organization that maintains the world’s largest private database of stolen art, works with auction houses to determine whether items have been ripped off. The organization compared the patina on the weather vane to a black-and-white photograph of it taken at the White River Junction station. Once Sotheby’s confirmed the weather vane had been stolen, it immediately withdrew the item from auction and contacted Vermont officials.
Ehrlich worked directly with the Art Loss Register to return the weather vane to Vermont, with Sotheby’s covering the $2,300 shipping cost. The state contacted local police, who said not much could be done to find and punish the perpetrator given how long ago the crime occurred.
According to Ehrlich, most weather vanes of the period were purely decorative and depicted a wide variety of subject matter; horses were very common. The stolen weather vane is notably detailed, Ehrlich said.
She’s now working with Vermont state curator David Schutz to choose a safe and appropriate location to display it.
“We want to make sure we honor the original context of the weather vane, but in a facility that gets a lot of visitors,” Ehrlich said. “I’m so glad there’s a happy ending to this story.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Blown Home”
This article appears in May 15-21, 2024.
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