The Municipal Egg
Bellamy, Ohio · Monument · est. 1976
A 14-foot fiberglass egg mounted on a concrete apron outside Bellamy City Hall. Commissioned for the 1976 bicentennial as a tribute to the town's poultry-shipping era, it has never received an official designation, and appears in municipal records variously as a sculpture, a seasonal decoration, and a utility cover.
History
The Municipal Egg was commissioned in 1975 by the Bellamy Bicentennial Steering Committee, which had secured $16,750 in federal bicentennial matching funds for 'a permanent monument to Bellamy's agricultural heritage.' The town had been a regional egg-shipping hub between 1911 and 1954, and early committee minutes describe plans for a full laying hen in fiberglass, with the egg positioned beneath it. Cost estimates from Lakeland Fiberglass Works of Sandusky established that the hen alone would consume the entire budget, and by the fourth meeting the committee had resolved, on a 6–2 vote, to proceed with the egg only.
Fabrication was scheduled for completion in November 1975 but ran four months behind after the two-piece mold cracked during a January cold snap, requiring a partial recast at Lakeland's expense. The egg was delivered to Bellamy on a flatbed on March 19, 1976, and installed on a poured concrete apron directly in front of City Hall — an apron which, according to Public Works drawings from the same year, is also the lid of a subsurface utility space identified only as 'junction vault 6.' The significance of this placement has been debated ever since.
The egg was dedicated on July 3, 1976. The committee had budgeted for a bronze plaque reading 'A MONUMENT TO THE POULTRY HERITAGE OF BELLAMY AND ITS PEOPLE, 1776–1976,' but per-letter engraving costs reduced the final inscription to 'THE EGG, 1976.' Classification problems emerged almost immediately: the Parks Department inventoried the egg as public sculpture, Public Works listed the apron and egg together as an 'access structure,' and the 1981 repaint was paid for out of the municipal holiday decorating budget, a precedent that has been followed in every repaint since.
A $9,300 restoration in 1994 addressed hairline gelcoat cracking on the north face and reignited a long-running disagreement over the egg's color, which the restoration contract specified as 'White (Eggshell)' and which the contractor delivered as 'Eggshell (White).' The Village Council has voted at its first meeting of each year, without recorded exception since 1988, to table the question of the egg's official designation until the following year.
“It's an egg. I've never once needed it to be anything more than that, and neither has anybody else.”
Local Legends
Some residents maintain that the egg is rotated slightly each spring, citing the position of a gelcoat scratch relative to the flagpole. The Parks Department denies owning equipment capable of moving it.
It is widely repeated in Bellamy that the egg is hollow and has been used by Public Works to store road salt during wet winters. Public Works states that the egg stores nothing and has issued this statement in writing twice.
Visitors occasionally report a faint hum near the base of the egg. The utilities superintendent attributes this to junction vault 6, and considers the matter closed.
The Controversy
In 2003, a wreath placed on the egg by the Bellamy Garden Auxiliary prompted a formal complaint that decorating the egg violated the village ordinance governing decoration of municipal decorations, on the theory that the egg is itself a seasonal decoration. The Village Solicitor produced a three-page opinion concluding that the egg's designation would need to be settled before the ordinance could be applied, which it has not been. The wreath was removed in January as scheduled.
Visitor Reviews
Larger than I expected and smoother than it looks in photos. The brochure explains the hen situation. We were in and out in fifteen minutes, which felt right.
Solid egg. You can walk all the way around it. There is a scratch on one side that a man in the parking lot had strong opinions about.
I stood in front of it for about ten minutes. It doesn't do anything. It just sits there being an egg outside a city hall, and somehow that was exactly the right amount. I think about it more than I expected to.
This review is for the drinking fountain in the City Hall lobby, which is the coldest municipal drinking fountain I have used in Union or Logan County. Egg is outside to the left as you exit.
Gift Shop
Currently in stock
- Egg-shaped eraser (does not erase well)ask at desk
- Postcard: 'The Egg in Winter'ask at desk
- Refrigerator magnet (size discrepancy noted on packaging)ask at desk
- Bicentennial reprint booklet: 'Bellamy and Its Egg' (14 pages, staple-bound)ask at desk
- Commemorative egg cup (sold individually)ask at desk