Boy with the Boot
Muchacho con la Bota
Boy with the Boot
The Boy with the Leaking Boot is a statue showing a young boy, with a bare right foot, holding up his right boot and looking at it. The statue is about 4 feet (1.2 m) tall, and in many cases forms a fountain, with water emerging from the toe of the boot. The origins of the statue are obscure. The boy is reported to be a young Italian newspaper seller who drowned, or an American army drummer-boy who carried water in his leaking boot to help fallen comrades, or a young fire-fighter either using his boot in a bucket chain or emptying his boot after an incident, or possibly none of these. A statue stood in City Hall Park, El Paso, Texas for 50 years before being moved to San Jacinto Plaza in the 1950s. There it was protected by a moat containing alligators. In 1995 it was in El Paso City Hall. The boy now resides inside the El Paso Museum of History.
