Meet the sculptor tricking New Yorkers with art dedicated to the city's fake history

Joseph Reginella has been building and installing legitimate-looking monuments across the city that commemorate legendary local events that never actually happened.

His most recent creation memorializes Nathaniel Katz, who introduced rats to New York City and was “catapulted into the Hudson River” as punishment, according to the weathered plaque beneath his pompous-looking, rat-covered bust.

Never heard the legend of old Katz?

It's because he never existed. Reginella, a freelance artist who specializes in mold-making, imagined the tall tale and built the bust in the image of his pigeon-loving neighbor.

But many people both on and offline believed it to be true, according to Reginella and several news reports.

It’s been the case with all six statues Reginella has mainly installed in Battery Park over the past nine years, which commemorate made-up events like the Brooklyn Bridge Elephant Stampede, the UFO Tugboat Abduction and the 1963 Staten Island Ferry Octopus Disaster.

They've generally been displayed a day at a time for one nonconsecutive month total, with Reginella setting them up in the morning and breaking them down in the evening. The bust of Katz appeared in October and Reginella plans to bring it, and possibly the rest of the monuments, back out for one-day spurts in the spring.

With every one,  "I was like, people are going to know this is an art installation immediately. And then everybody believed it. And I was just like, face-plant. I just can't believe this,” Reginella said.

“‘Idiocracy’ is definitely a documentary now, that's for sure,” he added.

So many people tried to visit a made-up memorial foundation for the 1963 tragedy that the real cultural institution at the address Reginella listed had to personally contact him and request he stop using it.

"They had him catapulted into the Hudson that would have been hilarious to witness," one TikTok user commented on a video of the Katz statue, apparently not realizing it wasn’t true.

"Y would they create a monument of him for that accomplishment is what baffles me," wrote another.

The way Reginella sees it, the monuments are not meant to be “gotcha” pranks but escapist delights and gateways into a sci-fi version of New York history he has lovingly built and displayed for public consumption. (In addition to the monuments, he creates extensive backstories and even documentaries for his tall tales.)

“For a minute or two, people are sucked into my world,” he said. “I’m not trying to prank you. I’m trying to pull you into my imagination for a little bit and have a little fun.”

But Reginella said he still receives angry emails through his website — NYCUrbanLegends.com, where he sells merchandise to help subsidize the significant cost of creating the monuments — from people upset by his creations.

"Stupidity at its best. The rat problem needs to be eradicated and you MORONS are paying homage? This country is STUCK on STUPID," one recent message critiqued.

Although he gets more hate mail than he can count (“maybe a dozen [emails] a month,” and innumerable negative TikTok comments), he has also received recognition and praise for his work, which has been included in multiple children's books about, at least on some level, determining fact from fiction. His work is also in a textbook as an example of heritage in the contemporary world. And it's mentioned in the display of LinkNYC kiosks.

Oddly, neither the NYPD nor the parks department are among the haters. Reginella said they have never given him trouble about his self-commissioned pieces, which are built to fit into his SUV and which he installs himself.

Reginella said a uniformed official once got out of a cop car and Reginella assumed he would be chastised. Instead, “he gets out of the car and he takes a selfie with it and gets back in the car.”

After almost a decade of building the costly, cold-cast bronze creations, though, Reginella believes he may soon be ready to call it quits on the project, which is now consuming a large amount of square footage in his life.

“The studio is getting filled up in here,” he said over the phone from his workspace in Silver Lake, Staten Island.

Additionally, he said that the piece he’s working on right now is so good, he thinks it might be his last: “This will maybe be the swan song, because this one’s going to be a shocker.”