Lucy the Elephant stands 65 feet tall and is the world’s largest elephant sculpture. This gigantic elephant sculpture is made up of nearly a million pieces of lumber, 8,560 ribs or arches, 200 kegs of nails, four tons of bolts, and 12,000 square feet of tin on the outside.
James V. Lafferty, Jr. erected the structure in 1881. Lafferty created the gigantic pachyderm to entice investors to visit “South Atlantic City” in order to purchase any of his estates in the surrounding area. Lucy was sold to the Gertzen family in the late 1890s. The Gertzens charged tourists ten cents to view the Elephant structure. In 1902 An English family rented the property to be use as a summer home.
They relocated to Lucy’s interior and transformed the main hall into four bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen, and a parlor. A restroom was installed in one of the little front shoulder closets, complete with a small bathtub, that is still on show today.
Lucy had been transformed into a tavern in the twentieth century, nearly burned to the ground, and extensively damaged in successive hurricanes. In 1970 The Gertzen family gave Lucy to the City of Margate and sold the property to developers. The new owner of the site where Lucy stands vowed to destroy the aging ancient elephant monument shortly after it was sold. A group of Margate residents founded the Save Lucy Committee to raise funds to relocate and repair this landmark.
Lucy was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971. Public and private donations totaling $124,000 were collected towards the repair of this sculpture. Lucy has been accessible to the public since the summer of 1974. Every year, around 32,625 people visit Lucy “The World’s Largest Elephant sculpture.