Terra cotta Clayton eagle needs refurbishing again

The Clayton eagle is once again endangered.

The tall, terra cotta eagle that once stood at the pinnacle of the National Guard Armory at 202 W. Second Ave. in Spokane faced extinction twice before. And now it’s in trouble again.

“Pieces of it are sloughing off and we don’t know why,” said Bill Sebright, president of the Clayton-Deer Park Historical Society, the group that spearheaded the eagle’s last rescue in 2009. “We don’t want this amazing piece of Clayton’s history to just wash away.”

The terra cotta eagle was sculpted, molded, fired and assembled at the Washington Brick and Lime Co.’s terra cotta operations in Clayton, just north of Deer Park, in 1922. Terra cotta, Italian for “baked earth,” is a clay-based ceramic earthenware. The eagle weighs about 3.5 tons, stands 9 feet tall and measures 8 feet across.

The sculptor was Victor Schneider, whose daughter Helen Bender recalled in a newspaper account in 1976 that it was made in 29 separate pieces taking several months to complete. She said that her father also sculpted the terra cotta gargoyles on the Sherwood and Chronicle buildings in downtown Spokane as well as other terra cotta figures in the area. Many recognizable terra cotta pieces in the region, including the rams’ heads on the Davenport Hotel, came from the plant in Clayton, where the clay-rich soil is the origin of the town’s name.

The Clayton eagle had been placed atop the Armory in 1922, where it remained until the building was sold to the city of Spokane in 1976. Its first rescue saw it moved and planted in what was supposed to be a permanent concrete stand at Geiger Field, where the National Guard relocated. It was there that the sandy colored eagle was painted over with colors representing the American bald eagle.

But in 2009 renovations at Geiger necessitated removal of the eagle. The National Guard sent out a notice in early December of that year to see if anyone wanted the eagle and could pay for its removal; otherwise it would have to be destroyed. The Clayton-Deer Park Historical Society, founded in 2002 to preserve the history of the Clayton-Deer Park area, was the only responder – and yes, they wanted it.

However, it was going to cost $5,200 to cut the eagle from its concrete base, and it had to be done by year’s end, just a few weeks away. They didn’t have the money, but with a promise to raise the funds (which they did), had it cut free. Knight Construction, located in Deer Park, then removed the eagle with a crane, shrink-wrapped it and surrounded it in foam, and transported it to their warehouse where it was stored for the winter – at no cost to the society – and all by the Dec. 31 deadline.

Because the historical society had no building or land of its own, the Clayton Drive-In Restaurant at 4535 Railroad Ave. in Clayton, where the society holds its monthly meetings, donated a spot on the south side of its lot, where the eagle could forever be at home not far from the demolished plant where it first was created.

After uncrating the eagle in early 2010, a restoration team removed the old mortar from its joints and regrouted and epoxied the cracks and joints with a moose milk concrete glue. The loose head was fixed and the eagle was sanded down and covered with latex primer and a polyurethane final coat – with colors including a regal white head and golden beak and feet.

At the site the historical society placed the eagle atop an 8-foot stand, with plaques dedicating the eagle to the men and women of the 1st Battalion, 161st Infantry of the Washington National Guard. Above the eagle fly two flags – an American flag that once flew over the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., and a prisoner of war flag “because we don’t want people to forget there are people still missing in action and still POWs,” said the historical society’s Sebright.

Most of the costs of the 2010 refurbishment were covered by the society, but again Knight Construction donated services – including the footings made from recycled concrete taken from the Boundary Dam.

But since its dedication at the Clayton Brick Days celebration in August 2010, more than 20 pieces have sheared off. “We have some theories but we don’t know why our repair is coming undone after just five years,” said Sebright, a retired teacher. “We can do the work ourselves, but we are looking for someone with expertise who can help us determine what materials to use and just what to do to help save this amazing piece of Clayton’s history.”

“There aren’t that many artifacts we can find from the old plant, which was closed in 1947,” he added, “and certainly none as big as this. Nothing is more symbolic of the terra cotta work done here than this eagle.”