This red couch, pictured while on display at the Cornell Art Museum, was once owned by Max Weinberg, Bruce Springsteen’s drummer. The city tossed the couch when the museum closed for a year. The Coastal Star/2021 file photo
By John Pacenti
It’s a saga indeed worthy of a Bruce Springsteen song.
A ruby red sofa, once owned by Springsteen drummer Max Weinberg and donated to the Cornell Art Museum, ended up thrown out like some common dorm couch at the end of a rowdy semester.
When the museum closed for a year, the couch got passed around the parks department like an unwanted orphan. It eventually landed in storage at Pompey Park.
The curved sofa was deemed garbage, put on the curb, forgotten … on the streets of Delray, left to the Darkness on the Edge of Town.
For Mighty Max — a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer — hearing of the couch’s final chapter didn’t sit well.
How could it ever have gone missing from the Old School Square campus? Or as The Boss once sang, “Now those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse.”
The E Street Band member filed a claim with the city. Commissioner Juli Casale said the couch was valued at $12,000.
Well, city government can be a cold, lonely place. “Down here, it’s just winners and losers … and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.”
Delray Beach denied the property claim on March 31.
City Manager Terrence Moore asserted in a letter to the drummer that the city viewed the furniture as abandoned property. The couch found itself on the outs following a turbulent period.
Weinberg was once a Delray citizen and served on the board of the Old School Square Center for the Arts Inc., the nonprofit that ran the campus, including the art museum.
Then the city terminated the nonprofit’s lease — citing financial unaccountability — and took over operations of Old School Square, eventually partnering with the Downtown Development Authority. The museum was closed between September 2021 and December 2022.
In his denial, Moore cited Florida law regarding abandoned property, arguing that neither Weinberg nor a representative of the nonprofit made a claim for the item. It was thus legally considered to have “no apparent intrinsic value” to the owner at the time the city resumed management of the campus, he said.
“Indeed, if a timely claim had been made, the abandoned property would have been returned,” Moore wrote.
Weinberg had donated the couch when the nonprofit curated the Cornell Art Museum. A photo shows it placed in front of modern art as if it were on display itself.
Weinberg, who is on tour with the Boss and played in Sunrise on April 23, did not return phone calls or emails for comment. However, he did write to City Attorney Lynn Gelin on April 2, saying the couch was part of a memorabilia exhibition five years ago.
When he met with the DDA to revisit staging the exhibition again, Weinberg said he was “shocked to see the red couch missing” from the Cornell. He also questioned the story that the sofa was thrown away.
“The quality of the item suggests to me that it was not discarded into the trash but that it lives somewhere within Palm Beach County, perhaps in the abode of someone who had access to it,” he wrote.
Internal city emails between Moore and Casale show a point of contention over who, exactly, was responsible for the item when the nonprofit vacated the premises in February 2022.
The city maintained that the sofa was essentially “left behind” by the previous tenant. In early 2022, the city facilitated the removal of items, Moore said.
Casale said Weinberg’s claim is part of a bigger issue where Moore looks to pay out claims without investigating. Email traffic showed Moore reversing his previous decision to pay an outside law firm to look into the matter once Casale got involved.
“Mr. Weinberg is a lovely gentleman, and this is certainly an unfortunate situation, but I do not believe this should be the financial responsibility of Delray Beach taxpayers,” Casale wrote to Moore.
Mayor Tom Carney weighed in on the matter when he heard The Coastal Star was writing the sofa saga. He said under state law, Weinberg’s beef should be with the nonprofit foundation that initially accepted the sofa.
One can only hope there’s a heaven — a Promised Land, so to speak — for all discarded once-loved furniture.
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