I was sitting at my desk while at work today and for some reason the AT&T "Golden Boy" statue popped into my head. I worked for AT&T from December 1987 to July 2001 and Golden Boy was a nickname for a golden statue named "The Spirit of Communication" which was installed on the roof of the AT&T corporate headquarters in 1916 at 195 Broadway in Manhattan (close to what is now the World Trade Center site). It was relocated to Madison Avenue, then Basking Ridge, NJ and it is currently located in Bedminster, NJ (where I worked from 1997-2001). 

The Golden Boy statue evokes the Etruscan deity, Turms, the Greek god Hermes (later adopted by the Romans and known as Mercury) and is also  similar to the Celtic god Lugh, the Egyptian god Toth and probably a few others I can't think of at the moment. Mercury is a messenger and a god of speed and commerce and also leads recently deceased souls to the afterlife. Mercury was honored during the festival of Mercuralia by merchants who would sprinkle their heads, their ships and merchandise, and their businesses with water taken from the well at Porta Capena. 

Hermes

The statue also reminds me of Icarus. From the Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology: Son of Daedalus who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax. Daedalus had been imprisoned by King Minos of Crete within the walls of his own invention, the Labyrinth. But the great craftsman's genius would not suffer captivity. He made two pairs of wings by adhering feathers to a wooden frame with wax. Giving one pair to his son, he cautioned him that flying too near the sun would cause the wax to melt. But Icarus became ecstatic with the ability to fly and forgot his father's warning. The feathers came loose and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea.

Golden Boy is shown with 3 lightening bolts in his left hand and a sinuous cable in his right hand and he is standing on top of a globe. The lightning bolt is a symbol of power but lightening is also unpredictable and is instantaneously destructive. The Greek god Zeus, ruler of Mount Olympus, used lightening bolts and thunder as weapons and was known to be a fickle and jealous fellow who was also prone to angry outbursts. Thor, the Norse god of thunder is also associated with lightening and the name Thor is the root of the word thunder. 

The Western Electric Logo featuring 'Golden Boy"

The cable that Golden Boy is holding could be analogous to the snakes of Hermes caduceus and the symbolic interpretations are as follows (Wikipedia): The snake is often depicted in non Judeo-Christian traditions as a source or deliverer of wisdom. In Gnosticism the serpent represents Sophia or the manifestation of principles of the feminine divine. In this it can be seen that the caduceus represents the authority to quickly deliver vital information or wisdom to aid, assist and enlighten. It is no surprise then that the caduceus is used by a variety of professions who have a connection with Hermes or Mercury in his traditional roles as the the god of commerce, eloquence, invention, travel and thievery. 

In the comic book world...

• Jay Garrick (1940's) gained his speed by inhaling water vapors and who wore a winged metal helmet reminiscent of the god Hermes.
   
• Barry Allen (1950's) who obtained his super-speed capabilities when bathed by chemicals after a shelf of them was struck by lightning.
   
• Wally West (1960's - 2000) West, Allen's nephew by marriage, gained the Flash's powers through an accident identical to Allen's.

The soundtrack was written by Queen, and need I mention Freddie MERCURY's name?

Going back to AT&T, this is an interesting article from the New York Times about Golden Boy and the history of the AT&T Headquarters building in NYC.

195 Broadway, New York. AT&T headquarters 1916-1983.

Streetscapes/AT&T Headquarters at 195 Broadway; A Bellwether Building Where History Was Made

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

April 23, 2000   

"WE didn't find anything that was in keeping with its history,'' said John Heath, a spokesman for AT&T, explaining its decision, which became known last week, not to move its signature Golden Boy statue back to Manhattan. The possibility of a park had been suggested -- and vigorously endorsed -- by Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern. 

Other possibilities were Golden Boy's original location atop the old AT&T Building at 195 Broadway or at the city-owned building at 346 Broadway, the former New York Life Insurance Building. But AT&T decided to leave Golden Boy where he now is, in front of its operational headquarters in Basking Ridge, N.J. Mr. Heath said that AT&T never seriously considered the pyramid on which the sculpture originally stood at 195 Broadway. For Peter S. Kalikow, the developer who bought building from AT&T in 1983, it will always be the missing element in a $3 million restoration. ''I still want to put Golden Boy back,'' he said. 

The statue was created under the aegis of Theodore N. Vail, AT&T's president who was something of a golden boy himself. He learned telegraphy is his early 20's, first at Western Union and then at the Union Pacific Railroad, where he rose quickly by making striking improvements in fast mail service. When Vail became the general manager of the nascent Bell Telephone Company, he moved it to New York and extended its reach into long distance and telephone manufacturing, organizing the American Telephone and Telegraph Company to oversee its growing empire. 

Vail became the president of AT&T in 1907 and of Western Union in 1909, when AT&T acquired it, promising important economies of scale. To house this new enterprise, Vail planned a new 29-story headquarters at 195 Broadway in 1912, to be built in two parts along the full blockfront from Dey to Fulton Streets. The first part, at the Dey Street corner with an L-shaped wing connecting to Fulton Street, was not completed until 1916. So in 1915, when Alexander Graham Bell completed the first cross-country telephone call, he had to do it from another telephone company building on the south side of Dey Street. In that call, Bell repeated his famous words of 1876 -- ''Mr. Watson, come here, I want you'' -- to Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco. 

WHILE the building was going up, AT&T spun off Western Union in 1913, amid antitrust allegations. About this time, AT&T had commissioned Evelyn Beatrice Longman, a sculptor, to design an appropriate statue for its new building. The statue was a 24-foot winged male figure in gilded bronze, standing atop a globe, encircled by cables and holding electric bolts in one hand. She called the finished work ''Genius of Telegraphy.'' By the time it was installed on the stepped pyramidal top of the Fulton Street wing of the AT&T Building in 1916, however, Western Union was gone, and the statue was renamed ''Genius of Electricity.'' 

The official name was changed once more, in the 1930's, to ''Spirit of Communication,'' reflecting the company's evolution. But it was the Golden Boy nickname that stuck. World War I delayed the Fulton Street half of the AT&T Building, which was finally completed in 1922. It presented a massive neo-Classical rebuke to the Beaux-Arts froufrou of earlier downtown skyscrapers. Layer upon layer of Doric and Ionic columns in cool gray granite rose up like an ancient monument. Welles Bosworth, its architect, designed the lobby as a forest of 43 giant marble columns, notable in their Doric simplicity, one of the great commercial interiors of the city. 

American Architect magazine noted that this emphasis on simplicity extended to the smallest details: ''There are no manufacturers' names to be seen anywhere in the building, not even in the elevators. It is a relief to the tired brain, not to be forced to read lettering on all the fixtures, as has been so universally customary in this country. One sees no name placarded on the exterior of this building. It needs none.'' Mr. Bosworth worked extensively for the Rockefeller family -- he designed Kykuit, their Westchester estate -- and in 1924 moved to France to supervise the Rockefeller-financed restoration of Versailles. 

Although the first cross-country call was placed from another building, the first trans-Atlantic call, to London in 1927, was made from 195 Broadway, said Dr. Sheldon Hochheiser, AT&T's corporate historian. In 1980, the Landmarks Preservation Commission proposed the lobby of 195 Broadway for landmark designation, although it never acted. In 1983, AT&T moved to new headquarters at Madison Avenue and 55th Street and installed Golden Boy at the entrance. In 1992, when AT&T leased the building to Sony, Golden Boy was moved to Basking Ridge. 

That's all for now...