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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA downtown Indianapolis holiday icon has returned to its perch. A bronze cherub sculpture is back above a clock mounted outside the Circle Centre mall at Washington and Meridian streets.
Tradition holds that the 3-foot-tall cherub guards shoppers through the holidays. The tradition began on Thanksgiving eve 65 years ago.
The cherub first appears in an L.S. Ayres department store catalog in 1946. To mark the company's 75th anniversary the following year, the statue was sculpted by Herron School of Art instructor David Rubins and placed atop the store's clock.
In the early 1990s, the cherub did not appear downtown after the May Department Store Co. bought Ayres and moved the cherub to its St. Louis headquarters. It returned to Indianapolis in 1994.
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