City Center

City Center is a modern commercial and entertainment complex in Derry, Maine, built in the mid-1950s to house a minor-league basketball team that never materialized. It stands on the site of the old Derry trainyards and is best known for the controversial twenty-foot-tall plastic statue of Paul Bunyan that dominates its lawn. For the Losers’ Club, City Center and its statue become a site of childhood terror when Richie Tozier experiences a waking nightmare in which the statue comes to life and tries to kill him—an encounter that foreshadows the shape-shifting nature of the entity haunting Derry.

Construction and Civic Controversy

City Center was erected in the years 1954–55, intended to host a minor-league basketball franchise that never materialized. The Derry City Council voted funds for the Paul Bunyan statue a year later, in 1956, sparking a heated public debate that raged for six months. Many residents saw the plastic giant as a potential tourist attraction; others, including the Derry High School art teacher, found it garish and unbelievably gauche—she wrote a letter to the Derry News threatening to blow it up. The controversy proved meaningless: the statue had already been purchased, and even if the council had decided not to use it, there was nowhere to store it. The statue was unveiled on May 13, 1957, Derry’s one-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, still shrouded in canvas. When revealed, Paul stood in bib overalls and a red-and-white-checked shirt, a splendid black beard, and a plastic axe slung over one shoulder, grinning unceasingly at the northern skies. Children were delighted; they climbed over his huge black plastic boots while parents took photos.

Richie Tozier’s Encounter with the Living Statue

In March 1958, ten-year-old Richie Tozier, exhausted after eluding Henry Bowers and his friends in the toy department of Freese’s Department Store, sat down on a bench beside the Paul Bunyan statue. He dozed off, and in that drowsy state the statue came to life. Paul’s huge plastic face bent down toward him, its forehead now low and beetling, its nose red like a drunkard’s, its eyes bloodshot and one slightly cast. The axe was no longer on its shoulder; Paul leaned on its haft, the blunt end having crushed a trench in the concrete sidewalk. From between gigantic yellow teeth drifted a smell like small animals rotting in hot underbrush. “I’m going to eat you up,” the giant rumbled, “unless you give me back my hen and my harp and my bags of gold.” The axe began to rise, making a low lethal rushing sound. Richie, paralyzed, believed he was dreaming—until the axe slowed at its apogee and he understood this was a dream that could kill. He rolled off the bench onto the gravel as the axe sheared the bench in two. Paul took a step toward him, the ground shuddering under its black boot. Richie scrambled to his feet and ran, the axe whispering behind him, the earth shaking as it buried itself haft-deep in the sidewalk inches behind his feet. When he finally dared to look back, the statue stood on its pedestal as always, axe on shoulder, grinning at the sky. The bench was whole. There was no footprint, no axe-slash in the concrete. Richie told himself it had been a dream, but he never forgot the feeling of the giant’s carrion breath.

The Statue’s Destruction

On May 31, 1985, during the catastrophic storm that accompanied the final confrontation with It, the Paul Bunyan statue exploded. It was as if the long-ago art teacher’s threat to blow it up had finally been carried out. The bearded grinning head rose straight up in the air; one leg kicked forward, the other back, as if Paul had attempted a split so enthusiastic it resulted in dismemberment. The statue’s midsection blew out in a cloud of shrapnel, and the head of the plastic axe rose into the rainy sky, twirling end over end. It sheared through the roof of the Kissing Bridge and then its floor. The statue was never rebuilt.

Narrative Significance

City Center and its Paul Bunyan statue serve as a key location in the novel’s exploration of childhood terror and the permeability of reality. Richie’s encounter with the living statue is his first direct, personal experience with the shape-shifting entity that haunts Derry—an experience he initially dismisses as a dream but later recognizes as real. The statue’s destruction during the storm that marks the entity’s final defeat provides a symbolic bookend: the false idol of Derry’s civic pride, which once embodied the town’s capacity for monstrousness, is literally blown apart when the town itself begins to collapse. The site of City Center, built on the old trainyards, also connects to the novel’s geography of forgotten and repurposed spaces, where the past continually resurfaces in unexpected forms.