The nearly 100-year-old Big Red Apple statue which stands in the City of Cornelia was recently restored and repainted as part of a restoration project.
Jessie Owensby, community development director with the city, said the Big Red Apple had to be restored due to the materials that it is comprised of.
"The statue was actually made of concrete, and it has an aluminum covering over the statue portion of it," Owensby said. "The apple is just concrete, and it had been painted over, and painted over, and painted over."
Owensby said moisture had gotten into the aluminum covering of the base of the statue, which started to deteriorate. Simultaneously, the layers of concrete were beginning to peel off of the apple itself. These two issues led to a tipping point when the time came for the apple's yearly repainting, Owensby said.
"Our public works department usually paints over it every single year, and they started to do it this year, they literally said 'I'm not touching this,'" Owensby said.
The Cornelia City Commission then hired a restoration firm to come and restore the apple.
Owensby said the restoration only took about a week at the end of May, but things got a little tricky when the time came to paint the apple its signature red hue.
"It took three times to get the correct shade of red," Owensby said. "The first and second time that they repainted it after the restoration, it was a running joke around here, we started calling it the big red tomato."
Now that the apple has been fully restored, Owensby said the city is happy with how it turned out.
"We're hoping that the restoration holds it for another 96 years," Owensby said. "We're not planning on ever getting rid of it. It's literally what defines us as a community. It's our unique thing."
