Subject: Florida teenager 'put piano on Miami sand bar'

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The piano sat unremarked upon for weeks

A 16-year-old boy has admitted placing an old grand piano on a sand bar in Miami's Biscayne Bay, ending a mystery that had gripped the city.

Nicholas Harrington said he had used the family boat to haul the piano to its lonely perch as an art project to boost his bid for university.

He said he was prepared to remove the instrument, an old movie prop.

"I wanted to create a whimsical, surreal experience," he told the Associated Press on Thursday.
Promotional video

Nicholas said he had hatched the plan after partiers at a raucous New Year's Eve party set the piano, which had sat gathering dust in a garage for years, alight.

On 2 January, he and his father Mark Harrington, a production designer for films, and others took the piano out to the sand bar, where it remained unremarked upon until National Geographic posted pictures of the piano on its website last week.

They filmed the process for a video that Nicholas intended to submit with his application to Cooper Union, a prestigious art and engineering school in New York City.

Florida authorities have disclaimed responsibility for moving the piano, and the US Coast Guard has said it will not move it unless it becomes a navigation hazard.

But Nicholas and his mother told the Associated Press they were prepared to remove it themselves.