“Future Man” is a thing of the past for downtown Lawrence.

Workers removed the 7-foot-high, 400-pound, robotic-looking sculpture from the corner of Ninth and Massachusetts streets after the sculpture’s creator found it leaning forward perilously Wednesday morning – pulled loose from its base overnight by what may have been an act of vandalism.

“It looks like someone may have been hanging on it or pulling on it,” said Michael Tubbs, City Hall’s liaison to the Lawrence Arts Commission. “He was kind of wobbly.”

Lawrence Parks and Recreation department employees, from left, Rod Croucher and Aaron Bertels work on taking out a 400-pound sculpture at Ninth and Massachusetts streets Wednesday morning after the piece had been damaged overnight and was tilting over. The sculpture, named Future

The rust-covered, steel and cast aluminum sculpture is one of eight works that have been on display since last May as part of the city’s 19th annual Outdoor Downtown Art Exhibition. Tubbs said the work is being held in storage and won’t return to the corner.

“The show was going to end in about three weeks,” he said. “It would have been going down.”

The robot has been a popular target for impromptu decorations, including a pair of bicycle reflectors someone pasted on its chest, sculptor Andrew Hadle said.

“I think he may have had a dress at one point,” said Hadle, 25, a Kansas University graduate who works in home repair to pay the bills. “I actually tied a balloon to him once.”

Hadle speculated that maybe someone had too much to drink, got rowdy, came upon the sculpture and saw it as something that wouldn’t fight back.

In some ways, it was a fitting end: The work was meant to represent a futuristic being whose time already has passed.

“Maybe he needed to be brought down in a blaze of glory,” Hadle said

An estimate of the amount of damage wasn’t available Wednesday. Tubbs said the city insures the works of art in the sculpture exhibition for up to $5,000, and that every few years one gets damaged. Perhaps the most prominent example in recent history was “Self Portrait as a Midget,” a circle of small, green-skinned men that had to be removed from Eighth and Massachusetts streets in 2004 after people wouldn’t leave the figures alone.

After “Future Man” is repaired, it will find a permanent home with painter Louis Copt, who bought it from Hadle before the damage happened. Hadle was in the process of filing a police report Wednesday evening.

“Honestly, I don’t mind too much. The only thing I mind is that I have to go fix it,” he said. “I made the thing. I’ve got to fix it.”