P.F. Chang’s closes in Boise. What about those horse statues ‘everybody loves’?
Like any Boise kid, William Goodman grew up knowing landmarks such as the rearing palomino above the Ranch Club in Garden City. And Betty the Washerwoman, the animatronic laundry lady toiling on the Bench.
“We used to call her Mrs. Wishy Washy,” he remembers fondly.
So when it came time to execute his duties as foreman of JPM Demolition this week, Goodman approached the two giant, gold-colored statues outside P.F. Chang’s with the appropriate reverence.
He and his crew “don’t like to destroy stuff,” Goodman told me. “We love those horses. Everybody loves those horses.”
After two decades, P.F. Chang’s closed Sunday at 391 S. 8th St. The restaurant’s furnishings and equipment were auctioned online in bulk for $15,260.
But not the old warrior horses. The steeds that started out gray but got painted hot pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The fiberglass beasts that many a buzzed bar hopper has climbed and ridden into an imaginary downtown sunset. (Not me, Mom, I swear.)
JPM Demolition was hired to dispose of them. “Those horses actually belong to P.F. Chang’s,” Goodman explained. “They don’t want people to have, I guess, their merchandise out there.”
As the demolition team burned through reciprocating-saw blades on the statues, their work did not go unnoticed Monday and Tuesday.
“We had 5 million people ask for them. Everybody wanted the head.”
(The head? What’s wrong with you people, Boise? Horses are noble creatures!)
“We tried to put them out of their misery in the most humane way,” Goodman quipped. “With a Sawzall.
“We didn’t have a big enough gun, so ...”
Filling in horse-hoof pedestal holes with concrete Thursday, Goodman still had passers-by asking him: “What happened to the horses?”
A larger question looming for downtown: What will happen to the 6,980-square-foot restaurant space?
It’s available for lease. Empty like the former sushi, Mexican and seafood restaurants across the street.
Those horses weren’t Boise icons. They’re chain-restaurant decorations. Found flanking the entrance to any P.F. Chang’s.
But without them watching over the corner of 8th and Broad, it felt a little lonely down there when I met Goodman. Especially knowing they’d wound up headless, dismembered, in the back of a dump trailer.
“We wanted,” he said, “... for somebody to do something with them, because they’d been a landmark for 20 years. But in my profession, sometimes it doesn’t go that way.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2025 at 2:44 PM.