Complex sentence: By the mid- 1990s they had restored Mercury to his place atop the tower, albeit in a two-dimensional form painted in "trompe l'oeil" style to replicate the original; this was destroyed in the 1998 downtown Nashville tornado but was soon replaced.
Split into simpler sentences: By the mid- 1990s they had restored Mercury to his place atop the tower, albeit in a two-dimensional form painted in "trompe l'oeil" style to replicate the original. This was destroyed in the 1998 downtown Nashville tornado but was soon replaced.