Man's 30-foot ice tower dismantled over safety concerns

A man's impromptu ice sculpture in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee was torn down after city officials deemed the 30-foot tower a safety hazard, WISN.com reports.

We here at the Sideshow are conflicted. On the one hand, David Schardt probably shouldn't have built an 8-ton tower of ice on public property that could tip over and break something or hurt somebody.

On the other hand, the sculpture was pretty rad.

Schardt created it by running a garden hose out of a hole on the top story of his home. He attached a string to the hose, and water that dripped down the string slowly froze. And it continued freezing, until the tower resembled something that would have fit right in at Superman's Fortress of Solitude.

But as the Man of Steel knows, America has rules. And one of them is that you can't build an ice sculpture as tall as a house on city property.

Schardt told the Journal Sentinel he did it for fun. "I'm always doing different, strange things, and I thought it'd be cool. And it was cool. The neighbors all thought it was awesome."

While he wishes "more people could have enjoyed it and seen it," he told the paper he understands the city had to do what it had to do.

It wasn't yet known if his artwork would get him a citation from the city, nor was it known if anyone thought to play "Taps" while the sculpture was destroyed.

Follow Mike Krumboltz on Twitter (@mikekrumboltz).