According to local news reports, the three-metre inflatable animal - nicknamed "Greedy Pig" - was erected by a local union to protest the alleged antics of one of Mr Schwarzman's neighbours.
Yesterday, the public got an unprecedented opportunity to assess the wealth of Mr Schwarzman and Pete Peterson, the other Blackstone founder.
In preparation for its landmark $7bn-plus initial public offering, Blackstone revealed that Mr Schwarzman earned nearly $400m last year and stood to make between $450m and $677m from the sale of some 5 per cent of his Blackstone stake in the IPO.
The listing will value Mr Schwarzman's remaining 23 per cent stake in Blackstone at more than $7bn.
The 80-year-old Mr Peterson, who will retire at the end of 2008, will sell almost 60 per cent of his stake for an estimated $1.88bn but has decided to give a substantial portions of the proceeds to charity. Blackstone plans to use the vast majority of the $4bn it expects to raise from investors - excluding the $3bn raised from the sale of a stake to a Chinese government agency - to buy holdings from existing owners.
Perhaps more importantly for critics of private equity, the founders will cash in some of their lucrative chips at a time of rising concerns over the end of the current private equity boom.
When the IPO was launched in March, buy-out groups were riding high on the crest of a takeover bonanza fuelled by cheap debt and listed companies' difficulties in dealing with short-term focused investors and increasingly tough regulators.
Mr Schwarzman quickly became the poster boy for that golden era.
In February, his lavish 60th birthday party, headlined by Rod Stewart, was the talk of the financial world and threw a spotlight on the lifestyles and riches of hitherto secretive buy-out moguls.
Less than a month later, Fortune magazine crowned him the "New King of Wall Street".
But with the price of debt on the rise, stock markets unsettled and intense opposition from some politicians and unions in the US and Europe, the big pay-day awaiting Mr Schwarzman and Mr Peterson may renew calls for curbs on the powers and wealth of private equity executives.
"It is going to reignite these issues," says Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, a professor at Columbia Business School in New York.
"Whenever someone is selling in these circumstances, investors should ask, why are they selling?"
Others argue that, Mr Schwarzman's decision to retain more than $7bn of his own wealth invested in Blackstone suggests he does not think the private equity boom is ending soon.
"It is a vote of confidence in the underlying strength of the business - although the amounts being sold here are so enormous in absolute terms that he is not going to be struggling to pay the gardener," says Patrick McGurn at Institutional Shareholder Services, a proxy advisory company.
Other experts argue that Mr Schwarzman would have found it difficult to sell much more of his stake without scaring investors away from the IPO and that his considerable wealth was augmented by last year's compensation of $400m.
Although that number is exponentially higher than the sums commanded by other Wall Street chieftains, Blackstone supporters argue that it is a portion of the profits made by the company, thus aligning the interests of investors and management.
Laura Thatcher, a partner and head of the executive compensation practice at Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird: "The fact that [Schwarzman] is drawing down $400m a year is the ultimate in performance-based compensation. Public companies could take alesson from this."