"Iron Mike"

When a veterinarian named Solomon Shapera took a house in Eastchester, N. Y. three months ago, he made his presence known by placing upon his lawn a life-size statue of a St. Bernard dog painted in lively colors. Despite the fact that the statue is not iron but stone, the neighborhood named the dog "Iron Mike," but did not suppose there was much that could be done about it. Some people said that since it was Dr. Shapera's business to treat dogs, the statue was an advertisement and therefore violated a district zoning ordinance. The veterinarian retorted that it was not an advertisement but a work of art--just as artistic, in his eyes, as a marble nymph or a cast-iron deer. One of Dr. Shapera's neighbors happens to be Dr. Raymond Lee Ditmars, famed reptile man of the Bronx Zoo. Dr. Ditmars not only declared Iron Mike to be "as offensive as a cigar-store Indian and as emblematic as the three balls over a pawnbroker's shop," but criticized it as being zoologically inaccurate.

Last week Eastchester's Zoning Board of Appeals ordered Dr. Shapera to get Iron Mike off his lawn and out of sight. The veterinarian flatly refused. Town Counsel William Olsen threatened to seek an injunction, whereupon Dr. Shapers hired lawyers to contest the action. Iron Mike, his tongue hanging out, his coat of paint scrubbed carefully by Dr. Shapera's housekeeper, continued to gaze benignly at genteel Eastchester.

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