From 1882 to 1971, a copper weathervane topped the Woonsocket train depot. Five-feet long and 17 inches high, the weathered green sculpture of a locomotive was precisely balanced on a post.

Those who remember it say that even from the ground, the craftsmanship of the 19th century-style engine and its coal car was unmistakable. Through rainfalls, snowstorms and every change of the wind, it was an unofficial and priceless symbol of the city.

Well, at an art auction in Manchester, N.H., last Saturday, the weathervane got a price -- a big one -- when an as-yet unidentified bidder bought it for $1.216 million, believed to be a record for an American weathervane.

"We knew the demand would be pushed to the ceiling," said James Horan, office manager for Northeast Auctions, the Portsmouth, N.H.-based company that ran the auction. "We thought $500,000 to $700,000. You just don't find this kind of thing.

"It was extremely unique," Horan said. "Weathervanes are usually cows or chickens, and they usually are not as ornate and detailed . . . and it's in extraordinarily good condition."

It looks like a train from the Old West, a broad cow-catcher spreading out like an apron in front, an enormous lantern at the front of the long cylindrical boiler and an engineer's cab in the back. The steam domes, smoke stack and boiler all have seams where they belong, the windows on the cab have trim and wire imitates the cable that an engineer pulled to ring the train's bell. It rests on two railroad tracks and the support post runs up through the front, lined up vertically with the smokestack.

Except for parts on the roof of the cab and the top of the boiler and smokestack where a brownish copper color still shows, the entire piece is a patina green, with occasional darker spots of corrosion along a some of the edges.

Pawtucket antiques dealer Richard Kazarian Jr. said, for $1.216 million, it was a steal.

"In the big picture, it's chump change," he said. "It's really a very small amount of money for a masterpiece. I could drive you down the street to some insignificant strip mall and it's a million-dollar piece of real estate. You can replace that, but you can't replace this."

"The big thing with this, as it is with all weathervanes, is its surface," Kazarian said, "that it be original and untampered in any way. It has exquisite form, remarkable workmanship. It's as right as rain. The patina is remarkable."

The depot weathervane is from an era where every detail of a building helped make a statement, Kazarian said. Weathervanes, because they went on the top, were in a way the exclamation point of a building.

"They were the crowning, literally, expression of what the architect was trying to say," he said. He described how city halls and courthouses use columns and other touches to convey a sense of power. "It all matters, the slightest detail matters."

Fred Giampietro, a Connecticut antiques dealer who sold the weathervane to Susan and Raymond C. Egan of Princeton, N.J., tried to get it back at Manchester, but the bidding was too rich for him. He said he'd heard the unidentified buyer was a museum.

"What really drives the market are three things it has: rarity, condition and execution," Giampietro said.

The weathervane ended its outdoor career in 1971, when a real-estate partnership that included then-Family Court Judge -- and later state Supreme Court Justice -- John F. Doris sold the depot building. But Doris, a longtime power in city politics, had an unbreakable condition: He wanted the weathervane.

"He retained it, he absolutely insisted on it," recalled local lawyer Scott K. Keefer, who helped close the 1971 depot sale. "It was a keepsake. Everybody in Woonsocket knew the train weathervane."

"I don't know how much it's worth or what is so interesting about this weathervane," Doris told the Woonsocket Call in 1971 when the sale was announced. "But I hope to find out."

After Doris removed it from the building, the new owners commissioned a duplicate, Blackstone Valley Tourism Council President Robert Billington said. That copy was later stolen. He said he hoped that the high price of the original would help spur interest in commissioning yet another copy that could be put on the depot, which is now used as office space by the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage corridor Commission.

Over the years the weathervane traveled through the hands of dealers and collectors, winding up in the the Egan's collection. Raymond Egan is a former executive with the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers-Squib. They could not be reached for comment.

The Egans began collecting duck decoys as newlyweds in the 1960s, according to Connecticut antiques dealer David A. Schorsch, who wrote an opening to the catalogue of items from the Egan collection that were up for auction Aug. 5. By the 1980s, he said, they were in the forefront of collectors of Americana.

They came to favor well-preserved items, Schorsch wrote, "as is evidenced from the most important weathervane and painted Windsor armchair to the smallest shaker box."

The entire collection went for $5.9 million, Horan said. The weathervane drew a high number of bidders, but the field narrowed to two bidders going back and forth until the $1.216 million price was reached.

Kazarian said he doubted the winner woke up with buyer's remorse. He said he was sure the losers were sadder.

"That's what dealers regret," he said. 'It's not the thing they bought, it's the thing they didn't buy."

jhill@projo.com/ (401) 277-7381