After our recent post about the smokin' hot statuary on Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights, a reader wrote to ask if we were aware of other such collections, particularly in the United States, where -- in case you haven't noticed -- the puritanical impulse runs pretty deep. Frankly, we have no idea! Hence, we have decided to sponsor a competition to determine which Stateside neighborhood has the the most smokin' hot statuary: the way we look at it, Washington Heights is pretty much at the top of the mountain unless or until we are knocked off.

The rules:

• The statues must be in (at least) a quasi-public place -- as opposed to a private collection -- in which members of the general public can observe the statuary in question without paying an admission fee.
• The statues must be in the United States (because everyone knows Europe is basically overflowing with hot gay statues); that said, we won't discourage our European readers (or anyone else) from submitting snaps, although you obviously won't be eligible for the top designation.
• Statues of either gender are acceptable, but we expect photographs to be taken with a "gay eye" and we will judge entries accordingly.
• Obviously, the statues must be smokin' hot.

Got it? Send pix to us at thegayrecluse[at]gmail.com and we will post the best ones (or for that matter, even the mediocre ones). The winner -- if there even is one, given that we don't expect anywhere to seriously challenge Audubon Terrace/Washington Heights -- will be announced at the end of 2008. Or maybe sooner. Election night, to distract us from the pain? Who knows. We look forward to hearing from you.

Can you do better than this? We'd like to see you try.

For those of you who have grown fatigued by the unceasing onslaught of "hot" photographs, videos and movie clips featuring live male actors and models, why not take a trip to Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights? Here you can reconnect with 5000 years of civilization, a period of history (or so it has been widely reported) during which 1) the internet didn't exist and 2) neither did cell-phone cameras (!). Commissioned in the early 1900s by Archer Milton Huntington (founder of the equally beautiful Hispanic Society, which owns the statues and the terrace on which they are located) and sculpted by his wife Anna Hyatt Huntington (wtf?), these statues offer a staggeringly wide array of choices for the modern palette. Whatever was going on with Arthur and Anna (we have our theories), we owe them a debt of gratitude for providing future generations with such an exceedingly fine collection of smokin' hot statuary (if not quite the Barberini Faun). We present just a few here:

Hot sword.

Another view of the hilt.

A hot dad.

Nice six for an older guy.

Hot twink in a tunic.

Into diapers?

Hot group sex.

Hot bears.

Woof.

The Hot Gay Statue Contest Roundup:

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Location: Audubon Terrace

Address: Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets

Remarks: Of all the exceedingly beautiful ruins in Washington Heights, perhaps none is more heartbreaking than Audubon Terrace. Not quite dead, it is like a great whale stranded on a beach; as much as we admire its sheer size and power, we are incapable of helping, and so must observe in an atmosphere shrouded in doom.

The south facade of Audubon Terrace.

Founded by Archer Milton Huntington in 1904, the site is an improbably grand Beaux Arts complex that originally housed The Hispanic Society, The Museum of the American Indian, The American Numismatic Society, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American Geographical Society.

We are always alone here, except for the statues.

But today -- as we see on a pathetic sign near the entrance, on which the letters have been painted over like a perverse tombstone -- only two of the original tenants remain (The Hispanic Society and the American Academy of Arts and Letters); the others, apparently, could not tolerate the idea of carrying out their respective missions in a neighborhood marked by crime, poverty and immigrants, whose established history of collective ambivalence to the site is tragic but in many ways understandable. (As recently as 2006, it was reported in The Times that even the Hispanic Society would be moving downtown to escape Washington Heights.)

Welcome to the ruins.

Although a new tenant -- Boricua College -- has repaired some of the brickwork near the entrance, the plaza as a whole reeks of an institutionalized neglect we generally associate with the cities of Eastern Europe that languished for so long under Soviet bureaucracy. It is of course a supreme irony that one of the most magnificent repositories of Hispanic art and literature lies largely abandoned in the middle of a Dominican neighborhood; what seems most unforgivable is that the respective factions (neighborhood leaders, city officials, representatives of institutions) have not succeeded in collaborating to preserve these last members of a species so obviously on the verge of extinction.

Another sign: the missing word is "glows."

We climb the stairs toward the entrance of The Hispanic Society, and feel a certain dread at the thought of ever having to say goodbye. And to those incapable of expressing sympathy for us and the neighborhood at large -- and yes, we have even encountered disdain, as if to say that Washington Heights doesn't deserve such a treasure -- we have a simple message: fuck you and your soulless downtown neighborhoods that reek of money and privilege! Why don't you come uptown for a change to see art that's literally struggling for life? Why don't you walk across the crumbling bricks and cracking limestone facades of Audubon Terrace and tell us why you're so much better equipped to appreciate this beauty than we are?

Still waiting for the tech boom.

Why don't you stare into the eyes of El Cid (or better yet, Don Quixote) and tell him that he doesn't belong in such a poverty-stricken wasteland?

El Cid (1942), by Anna Hyatt Huntington

But the anger passes and we are left alone on the plaza, where we walk among the warriors, who look past us with dull, metallic eyes. Though uniformly colossal, they too seem less anxious to fight than drained and weary, resigned to whatever fate may bring.

"Oh, please don't drop me home..."

For more photos of Audubon Terrace, click here.