Photo of the day

04 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Monuments and Statuary

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Yours truly was at Baruch College for a conference this morning when he came across this statue of Bernard Baruch in the Vertical Campus building. Baruch’s ties to City University of New York dated back to his time at City College in the late nineteenth century. When he died fifty years ago in 1965 he left a sizable chunk of his fortune to what was then the Bernard M. Baruch School of Public Administration. About a year later the Baruch School became the full-fledged, four-year Baruch College. Apparently there are several statues such as this one sprinkled here and there across the country; Barcuh was called the “park bench statesman” for his affinity to mediate on important affairs seated on a favorite perch in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House.

Women working on the railroad in the Allied war effort in Bernard Baruch's War Industries Board, Glenwood, Pennsylvania, circa 1918

Women working on the railroad in the Allied war effort as part of Bernard Baruch’s War Industries Board, Glenwood, Pennsylvania, circa 1918

Baruch was a consigliere to presidents from Woodrow Wilson, to FDR, Ike and beyond. He ran the War Industries Board during the First World War. Really it was people like Baruch who kept the trains running on time and the goods flowing across the Atlantic. There is something so tactile about statues such as this one, where you can get up close and touch it. Artistically this quite deliberate and allows a person to connect with the subject in way that is impossible when he/she is up on a pedestal. It reminds me of the Lincoln statue in front of the Visitors Center at Gettysburg that always has a crowd around it. I had him to myself at 8:30 but when I left around 4:00 sure enough there were folks sitting next to BB.

(bottom image/War industries Board, National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons)

Countdown to the WW1 Memorial selection

29 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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New York State doughboys retuning home, August 1919

Empire State doughboys retuning home: Oriskany Falls, August 1919

Blake Seitz of the Washington Free Beacon has written an informative piece about the ongoing project to build a national First World War memorial in Washington D.C. Some readers may know that the WW1 Centennial Commission has been working on this endeavor for some time now, and that the competition is now down to five selections. A winner will be chosen in January. Whichever design wins, there will undoubtedly be a few bugs and details to be worked out. Still, the process has gone fairly well so far. Seitz captures well the purposes of U.S. war memorials, especially how the ones in our nation’s capital reflect the times in which they were built and the individual conflicts they commemorate. There is a reason Lincoln is etched larger than life in granite and the Vietnam Wall stretches semi-below ground with its fatalities listed one-by-one in chronological order. As Centennial Commission Ed Fountain points out in the article, the Great War’s ambiguity has been one of the major reasons it has taken so long to build a national World War 1 memorial in Washington.

It was not always this way. In the 1920s and 30s Americans built approximately 10,000 tablets, memorials and statues across the country. D.C. itself had its own memorial, commissioned in 1924 and finished in 1931 in honor of the men from Washington City who served and died Over There. These were all locals projects however. The Depression and rise of Hitler eventually took away whatever enthusiasm there was to remember the events of 1914-18. I strongly urge you to read Seitz’s article.

(image/Oneida County Historical Society)

The effort to preserve the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium

17 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Memory, Monuments and Statuary

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The Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium as it is today.

Since the start of the WW1 centennial there has been a great deal of effort to inventory and/or preserve the roughly 10,000 Great War memorials spread across the United States. One of the most unique is the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium. Hawaii was a territory in 1917 and would not become a state until 1959. Still, nearly 10,000 Hawaiians fought in World War One, and 101 of them would lose their lives. That is itself a story that someone will hopefully tell over these next few years.

One effort that has been underway for some time is to save the natatorium. Hawaiians opened this memorial in 1927 and used it for decades in ways that reflect its island provenance. Olympian Duke Kahanamoku himself swam and surfed there, as did thousands of other Hawaiians. It eventually fell into disrepair and closed in 1979. Though the natatorium closed, its location is still an active place for memorial ceremonies and other events of the like.

Here is a recent video that depicts the current effort to preserve the natatorium. Note that my sending it does not automatically imply any position on the preservation effort. That is something the people of Hawaii will decide for themselves. It is a story that nonetheless needs to be told.

(image By Waikiki Natatorium [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

“They deserve their own memorial.”

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Memory, Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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Pershing Park is to become the location of the National WWI Memorial. The design competition is now underway.

Early this afternoon, as per most Wednesdays, I sat in on the World War One Centennial Commission weekly conference call. I can tell you that many exciting things are being planned for the coming years. One initiative that is moving along quickly is the creation of a national WW1 memorial in Washington. Such projects tend to come in waves. Over the past 35+ years we have seen the creation of the Vietnam War memorial, followed by the Korean War memorial, and then the WW2 memorial.

There is currently no national monument for veterans of the First World War either on the Mall or anywhere in the District of Columbia. What many believe to be a monument to the veterans of 1917-19 is actually a site dedicated to veterans from the District of Columbia. Tourists always walked past this monument, which is happily getting more recognition due to its proximity to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. Still, there has never been a national monument for veterans of the Great War.

That brings me back to the Centennial Commission. One of the Commission’s efforts is to convert Pershing Park into a national monument. The park has a number of aesthetic and bureaucratic challenges. For one thing it falls under the jurisdiction of several different local and federal agencies. Nonetheless the project is proceeding smoothly, which is a testament to the dedication and hard work of the Centennial commissioners and staff.

Pershing Park has a lot going for it. It is on Pennsylvania Avenue not far from the White House. Look closely at the image above and you can see the Treasury Building in the background. This will be a real addition to our cultural memory within our nation’s capital. The design competition opened last week. The deadline for phase one submissions is Tuesday July 21, 2015. If you or anyone you know are interested in submitting a proposal check out the details here. You have six weeks.

(image/Tim1965 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

Memorial Day 2015

25 Monday May 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Leonard Wood (General), Monuments and Statuary, New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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A few years ago during Open House New York weekend a friend and I went to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Riverside Park hoping to get a glimpse inside. We did not, as it turned out to be closed. This monument was completed in 1902 after decades of the sausage-making inherent in constructing such public memorials. Fundraising efforts dated back to at least 1882. Officials nearly chose 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, the site where the statue of William T. Sherman now stands. Oddly the Sherman statue, dedicated on Memorial Day 1903, was originally intended for Riverside Park but Sherman’s family did not want it so close to Grant’s Tomb.

The New York Times noted this past Thursday that Riverside Park Conservancy is pushing for a major renovation. The last major rehabilitation came in the early 1960s during the Civil War centennial.

The Soldiers and Sailors Monument was part of the fabric of New York City Memorial Day ceremonies for decades, and still is to a degree. There were 700 Grand Army of the Republic veterans in attendance on Memorial Day 1914. Archduke Ferdinand was killed just a few weeks later and the Great War was soon on. The following year Leonard Wood, then commanding the Department of the East at Governors Island, pointedly made an appearance. I say pointedly because he, Theodore Roosevelt and others were advocating strenuously for American preparedness, a sentiment that did not endear the general to the Wilson Administration.

Lieutenant Colonel Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, veteran of the Great War and a founder of the American Legion, led the Great War contingent at the 1919 Memorial Day ceremony held at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Present that day were veterans of the WW1, the Spanish-American War, and the dwindling contingent from the War of the Rebellion. Ironically Governor Al Smith reviewed the troops that Memorial Day; Roosevelt ran unsuccessfully against Smith five years later in the 1924 governor’s race.

I really hope the conservancy can raise the funds to rehabilitate this important part of our city’s and nation’s history.

(image/Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Soldiers’ and sailors’ Monument, Riverside Drive, New York.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-8d55-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

In Flanders Fields

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Monuments and Statuary, New York City

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It has been a busy week, thus the lack of posts. Yesterday I did manage to get to DeWitt Clinton Park on 52nd Street and 11th Avenue for the annual In Flanders Fields commemoration. I ran into Mark Levitch from the World War 1 Memorial Inventory Project at the ceremony. He told me he now has about 2,000 of the nearly 10,000 Great War monuments across the country inventoried. Remember, he is looking for volunteers if one is interested in playing amateur historian. He is doing some interesting and important work. There were many folks there from last week’s Lusitania event as well.

The In Flanders Fields doughboy, sometimes called the Clinton doughboy, is just one of the dozens of Great War monuments here in New York. The sculptor Burt W. Johnson, was the brother-in-law of Louis St. Gaudens. The former U.S. ambassador to Germany, James W. Gerard, dedicated the monument in 1930. (Sixteen years earlier Gerard defeated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination in the 1914 U.S. Senate race in New York; Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson Administration at the time.) Yesterday’s program was not a centennial program per se; they do this program every year. Some regular attendees did tell me though that yesterday’s attendance was twice the average because of the 100th anniversary of the war.

Here are a few pictures.

Remembering the Lusitania

07 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Lusitania, Memory, Monuments and Statuary

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This morning I had the good fortune of attending the World War 1 Centennial Commission’s commemoration for the Lusitania. Here are a few pics.

The event was at Pier A on the Battery. This space was refurbished about six months ago and is beautiful. I learned today the the clock tower dates to 1919 is reputedly the first permanent Great War monument constructed in the United States.

Wreaths from different nations. It is important to remember the international aspects of the Lusitania tragedy. Commemorations were taking place all around the world today, often at the same time as this event here in Manhattan at 10:00 am.

Consul General Ms. Barbara Jones of Ireland was one of the speakers. One must remember that the Lusitania was about twelve miles off the coast–easily within sight distance–of Ireland when she was struck. Many local fisherman and others were first responders.

Deputy Consul General Mr. Nick Astbury of Great Britain was another speaker.

Here are the various diplomats, descendants of Lusitania survivors, Cunard representatives, and others at the time to throw the wreaths.

Attendees were welcomed to throw individual flowers.

When it was over forty-five minutes later, there was a reception inside Pier A. The Fire Department marked the event by sailing past.

John Howland Lathrop’s Unitarian Church

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Heritage tourism, Historiography, Interpretation, Monuments and Statuary, New York City

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Late last week I was walking though Brooklyn Heights on my way to meet a friend for lunch when I saw that the gates of the First Unitarian Congregational Society Church were open. I love to visit the many places of worship here in New York City, which depending on the era might have been built by Italian craftsmen who came through Ellis Island or were centers of Abolition during the Civil War Era. No, not all of them have such a dramatic provenance but one gets the idea. I had never been in the First Unitarian before, though I had walked past it dozens of times. The neo-gothic structure dates to 1844 and carries the years well.

I was only there for all of five minutes when, heading toward the door, I noticed a Great War marker on the wall in the vestibule. Of course I took a few pictures to research and submit to the World War 1 Memorial Inventory Project. The plaque itself was nothing out of the ordinary, nor would one expect it to be. With simple dignity it marked the contributions of those from the the congregation who served in war from 1917-18. A few of them made the ultimate sacrifice. I could not find too much information about when the plaque was dedicated. The church leader though turned out to be an interesting individual.

The Reverend Dr. John Howland Lathrop led the First Unitarian from 1911-57. He was against American involvement in the war but when it came in April 1917 he made his own contribution: Lathrop helped bring the Red Cross into the United States Navy. When that initial work was done he led the Red Cross’s WW1 initiative within the Third Naval District. That jurisdiction covered most of the Northeast. He was successful in these endeavors and continued a life of public service until his retirement in the late 1950s. A lot of that work involved cleaning up the mess in Europe that resulted from the chaos and destruction of the Great War.

I intend t do a little more with Lathrop in the coming months. A little digging revealed that his papers are at the Brooklyn Historical Society, which is across the street from the church that he served for nearly half a century.

The United American War Veterans

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Monuments and Statuary

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Yesterday I submitted some research to the World War 1 Memorial Inventory Project about a plaque that stands on the northern wall of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Bowling Green. The Custom House is a beautiful structure designed by Cass Gilbert at the turn of the twentieth century. Standing at the corners of Broadway and Whitehall, the building is one of the grandest and most distinct structures in Lower Manhattan. Today it houses the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the National Archives. Late in the summer I stumbled upon this monument early on a Sunday morning on my way to Governors Island:

I had to look him up but William H. Todd was a shipbuilder who lived in Brooklyn, NY. That makes sense as his company, Todd Shipyards Corporation, was based Red Hook. The company was formed through various mergers in 1916 and built many of the barges and minesweepers used by the U.S. Navy during the Great War. Oddly Todd died in 1932 when he fell down a flight of stairs at his son’s home.

What caught my attention on the plaque though wasn’t Todd, but the reference to a U.A.M.V. It turns out this was something called the United American War Veterans. I had never heard of this group but as it turns out it was a veterans group that in some ways competed with the American Legion after the First World War. It did not last; the U.A.M.V. seems to have gone defunct in the late 1920s.

If you search old newspapers from the 1920 you see a crazy quilt of Memorial Day commemorations across New York City. The Grand Army of the Republic was shrinking but still very much around. Not to be outdone there were then the veterans of the Spanish-American War. Now in 1919 and into the 20s there were the doughboys. Sometimes these cross-generational groups marched together and sometimes not. What’s more, even after consolidation in 1898 Brooklyn and Manhattan, not to mention the other boroughs, often had their own separate commemorations. There could be even more than one within the boroughs.

We see the remnants of the G.A.R. all around us. And the American Legion is still with us. It is funny though how some of these other groups fell by the wayside, all but forgotten by history.

The Meuse-Argonne campaign begins

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Monuments and Statuary, WW1

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This past weekend marked the anniversary of the start of the Meuse-Argonne campaign, which would continue on through the end of the war in November 1918. The American Battle Monument Commission just published this video that captures the essence of what it was all about. I cannot emphasize the quality of the work the ABMC has been doing during the Centennial, though that is no surprise given the organization’s rich history and institutional memory.

The Strawfoot

~ a New Yorker's American History blog

Category Archives: Monuments and Statuary