I never have even the slightest idea what to expect when I come to work. I laughed when I arrived the other day and found out that someone needed to know Willy’s height — it seemed preposterous. My amusement, though, lasted only a moment. Then I was suddenly desperate to know too.

A search of the correspondence between Dr. Lovett and the sculptor, John Angel, turned up some interesting things that were new to me but yielded nothing about height. All I could think of was going out and measuring it but I couldn’t figure out how to do that and keep any dignity. So I went over to FE&P, where I quickly assembled a crack team of experts:

It took a little doing but we eventually arrived at the conclusion that from the sidewalk to the top of his head the whole thing is roughly fifteen and a half feet tall.

Afterwards I had a dim recollection of once coming across a drawing of the base, which was designed by Cram and Ferguson. This could only have been in one place–the room full of drawings tucked away in Fondren:

I don’t have the strength to talk about this room right now but suffice it to say that there’s a lot of stuff in those drawers. Nonetheless I found what I was looking for and I even stood up on a shaky chair to take a picture of it for you:

Not only is it beautiful, the measurements also match ours. We can all rest easy now.

Many thanks to Ron Smith and Hannes Hofer, as always.

Bonus: Thanks also to loyal reader owlcop, who sent this beautiful image from this morning.