New Iberia’s oldest resident may be moving. The 7-foot-tall, full length statue of the Roman emperor Hadrian, which has been housed in a special glass atrium in the IberiaBank building on St. Peter Street in New Iberia since about 1980, could be on the auction block sometime soon. The building is up for sale, and IberiaBank is working with specialists in antiquities to ascertain its value. “We don’t have firm plans yet,” says executive vice president and director of communication for IberiaBank Beth Ardoin. “If we don’t sell it, we will keep it in New Iberia.”
Carved in 127 A.D. to commemorate the emperor Hadrian, 117 to 138 A.D., a Spanish general who is best known for the great wall he built across England to protect roman holdings from the barbarian Picts, the statue is the only extant full length portrait of the emperor in the United States. It was removed from Rome in 1820 by the 4th Earl of Darnley, and brought to Coban Hall in Kent, England. From there, it came into the possession of New Orleans collector Wilson J. Raker, until it was sold at auction by Sothby and Co. in 1957. IberiaBank purchased the statue for $3,000. Its worth today is speculated anywhere from $300,000 to nearly $1 million.
According to next door neighbor and New Iberia historian Paul Schwing, at first the statue was inside the bank. “When they first put it up outside, it was facing the Baptist Church, right across the street,” he says. It stood on a plinth outdoors, unprotected from the weather, and pranks. During church one Sunday, “someone put a can of beer in his hand, put a bra on him and he had some panties handing in the crook of his arm. I called the janitor for the bank and told him we couldn’t have the people coming out of church looking at that,” Schwing recalls. The ancient statue lost one of his fingers during that time as well. “That’s when they put him under glass,” says Schwing.
The statue of Hadrian is a tourist attraction in New Iberia, and Schwing, a town booster, often walks across the street from his flower shop to hand out brochures to visitors and chat about his ancient neighbor. “I don’t want anybody to move it,” he says. “And I don’t know how they will. It weighs nearly a ton.”
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
New Iberia’s oldest resident may be moving. The 7-foot-tall, full length statue of the Roman emperor Hadrian, which has been housed in a special glass atrium in the IberiaBank building on St. Peter Street in New Iberia since about 1980, could be on the auction block sometime soon. The building is up for sale, and IberiaBank is working with specialists in antiquities to ascertain its value. “We don’t have firm plans yet,” says executive vice president and director of communication for IberiaBank Beth Ardoin. “If we don’t sell it, we will keep it in New Iberia.” 
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