Rittenhouse Square

This guide to Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia starts at Billy the Goat, the bronze sculpture whose nose gleams gold from decades of children rubbing it for luck, then rewinds to sculptor Albert Laessle, accused in nineteen-oh-one of cheating by casting a real turtle instead of sculpting one. It follows him to Paris and back, to his nineteen fourteen goat modeled on a real family pet and dismissed by one critic as positively vulgar, and to the city that bought it anyway and installed it here in nineteen nineteen. Go ahead and rub Billy's nose for yourself, the same way visitors have for over a century.