Bronze Archie, Ageless Teenager

Meredith, New Hampshire

A human-size statue of the redheaded, freckle-faced cartoon character Archie was unveiled in Meredith on August 9, 2018. Meredith was the hometown of illustrator Bob Montana, who drew the first Archie comic strip in 1942, and who continued cranking out Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead until he died cross-country skiing in 1975.

The Archie statue sits in a bench, with room for visitors, looking across the street toward the workshop where Bob spent his days drawing Archie comics.

Montana modeled various Archie characters on people he knew in Meredith, and he was known for taking children for rides in his 1923 Model T, the same car that Archie drove in his early comics. Montana passed away before he could realize his dream of turning Meredith into an art colony, but he did succeed in having the town's parking meters removed.

"America's typical teenager" was immortalized in bronze, complete with crosshatched hair, by Belarusian sculptor Valery Mahuchy.