Winged Figures of the Republic (1937)

Hansen’s Bronze Sentries at Hoover Dam

The Winged Figures of the Republic are two 30-foot bronze sculptures standing on polished black diorite bases at the Nevada entrance to Hoover Dam. They flank a 142-foot flagpole at the center of Monument Plaza, and they’re the first thing most visitors see. Each figure weighs over four tons of statuary bronze. They’ve stood here since 1937.

Hansen designed them as part of a larger sculptural program at the dam that includes a celestial Star Map, memorial plaques, a Zodiac Compass, and ten bas-relief panels on the elevator towers. The Winged Figures are the most visible element of that program—the ones people photograph, the ones that show up in documentaries about the dam, the ones tourists rub for luck. But they’re not standalone monuments. They sit on top of Hansen’s Star Map terrazzo, which tracks the precession of the equinoxes across 26,000 years. The figures and the floor beneath them were designed together.

The form is Art Deco—angular wings, stylized musculature, geometric precision. Hansen trained in classical sculpture but adopted Art Deco’s belief that art, science, and industry belonged together. The figures have a hybrid quality: part angel, part worker, part sentinel. Their wings extend skyward but their feet are planted on stone. After nine decades of desert exposure, the bronze has developed a deep green verdigris patina. The original polished surface survives only on the toes, where millions of visitors have rubbed the metal smooth.

How the Winged Figures Were Cast

The Winged Figures were created using sand-mold bronze casting—a process that required 492-ton molds for each sculpture. Molten statuary bronze, heated to approximately 2,500°F, was poured continuously into the molds in a single pour. Each finished figure contains over four tons of bronze with a shell thickness of 5/8 inch.

The scale was unusual for the period. In 1935, these were among the largest single-cast bronze sculptures in America. The casting process demanded precise metallurgy—interrupting a pour of this size would have created structural weakness at the seam. The sand molds themselves were engineering projects, built to contain the weight of molten metal while maintaining the surface detail Hansen designed.

The bases are polished black diorite, a dense igneous stone that Hansen selected for its visual contrast against the bronze and its resistance to desert weathering. The figures were installed at Monument Plaza on the Nevada side of the dam, positioned symmetrically around a 142-foot flagpole.

Hansen was appointed consulting sculptor for Hoover Dam in 1936 and completed the sculptural program by December 1937. He wasn’t executing someone else’s design—he proposed the entire Monument Plaza program and the Bureau of Reclamation accepted it. The Winged Figures, the Star Map, the memorials, the bas-reliefs—all of it came from one artist’s vision. For more on Hansen’s life and broader body of work, see his biography.

What the Winged Figures Represent

Hansen described the Winged Figures as embodying “the immutable calm of intellectual resolution, and the enormous power of a trained physical body, living in an alert pose.” They don’t depict specific people—not workers, not politicians, not mythological figures. Hansen said they represent “mankind itself,” the collective human capacity that made a project like Hoover Dam possible.

The hybrid form is deliberate. The wings suggest aspiration and spiritual transcendence. The muscular bodies suggest physical labor and material power. Hansen wrote in 1928 that symbols “form the connecting link between the spiritual and the material world.” The Winged Figures are that link—figures that belong to both realms simultaneously.

Hansen also called them sentries. They stand at the entrance to the dam, flanking the flagpole, facing outward. The posture is watchful, not celebratory. In Hansen’s framework, they’re guardians of what the dam represents: collective achievement, national infrastructure, the engineering conquest of the Colorado River. This is 1930s public art with 1930s convictions about American capability—made during the Depression, when projects like Hoover Dam were supposed to demonstrate that the country could still build something monumental.

Why People Rub the Feet

For over eight decades, visitors have rubbed the toes of the Winged Figures for good luck. The practice has worn the bronze smooth and golden—a visible patina of human contact against the surrounding verdigris. Millions of hands have done this.

Nobody knows exactly when the tradition started or why. I’ve looked for documentation of its origin and haven’t found any. It may have begun shortly after the 1935 dedication, or it may have developed gradually as tourism to the dam increased. There are parallels at other public sculptures—Juliet’s statue in Verona, the Charging Bull on Wall Street—but the Hoover Dam tradition doesn’t appear to have a documented starting point.

Hansen never anticipated it. He designed the figures as monumental Art Deco sentries, not as objects of participatory ritual. But the foot-rubbing has become inseparable from the sculptures’ identity. The golden toes are now as much a part of the visual experience as the verdigris patina or the angular wings. It’s an accretion of meaning that the artist didn’t intend but that ninety years of public contact have made real.

Visiting the Winged Figures Today

The Winged Figures are accessible to visitors at Monument Plaza on the Nevada side of Hoover Dam. No separate admission is required—standard dam access covers everything. The sculptures are outdoors and visible year-round.

After ninety years of desert exposure, the figures display a deep green verdigris patina—the result of oxidation on the bronze surface. Verdigris is a natural and generally protective layer; it slows further corrosion rather than accelerating it. The toes remain golden and polished from visitor contact. The diorite bases show weathering but remain structurally sound.

The Bureau of Reclamation maintains the dam and its infrastructure, but the sculptural program doesn’t have a dedicated conservation authority. Hansen’s work at the dam—including the Winged Figures, the Star Map, and the bas-reliefs—falls under the Bureau’s general maintenance responsibilities rather than a specialized art conservation program. The Star Map restoration (completed January 2026 after a three-year process) illustrated both the vulnerability of Hansen’s work and the institutional gap in its stewardship.

If you’re visiting: the Winged Figures and Star Map are at the Nevada entrance. The elevator tower bas-reliefs are visible from the roadway across the dam’s crest. The workers memorial and Elwood Mead memorial are in the plaza area. Arrive early to avoid crowds—the figures are best viewed and photographed in morning light.