John Ericsson
by Jonathan Scott Hartley, dedicated
1893 and 1903
Bibliography, Out-takes,
Discussion Questions,
Suggested Readings
New York Times 4/15/1893 on the original
dedication.
New York Times 8/2/1903 on Hartley's
revision of the sculpture: "New Ericsson Statue Unveiled at Battery.
Army, Navy, and City Represented at Ceremonies."
New York Times 8/30/1931: Adams, Mildred.
"Orphaned Statues of Our Parks: Erected by Private Organizations Which
Accept No Responsibility for Their Upkeep, They Fall into Decay or
Suffer Sadly from Soot and Weather." Mentions that Ericsson is wearing a
wreath that's turned around by wind, so it looks like a life-preserver.
New York Times 8/23/1936: Robbins, L.H. "A
City Statue's Lot Is Not a Happy One." Mentions that Ericsson is
one of half a dozen statues that tourists search out.
New York Times 8/21/1938: Jewell, Edward
Alden. "Winds of Scorn for Our Statues." "We find, as the search
continues, sculptural embodiments that, if not in pronounced degree
distinguished, must yet be denominated stalwart, honest and convincing.
There is the Benjamin Franklin by Plassmann in Park Row. There is the
John Ericsson by Jonathan Scott Hartley down in Battery Park, simple,
clear-eyed manliness transcending his somehow juvenile posture and
paraphernalia."
New York Times 3/11/1962: Brown, Dinah. "Men
of Progress: But Who Are They?
Lederer, Joseph. All Around the Town (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975), pp. 5-6, with a photo of the 1939
Monitor and Merrimac Memorial in McGolrick Park, Greenpoint,
Brooklyn, near where the Monitor was constructed. The Brooklyn
memorial shows a semi-nude man pulling on a rope wrapped around a
capstan. It's rather nicer to look at than some other works of the
Social Realism school, which tend to emphasize muscle over mind (for
example, the Atlas at Rockefeller Center), but I cannot figure
out what it has to do with Ericsson's steam-powered ironclad: a capstan
is used for helping to haul in sails.
Gayle, Margot, and Michele Cohen. The Art
Commission and the Municipal Art Society Guide to Manhattan's Outdoor
Sculpture (New York: Prentice Hall, 1988), p. 5.
SIRIS (Smithsonian
Institution, Inventory of American Sculpture)
IAS 76003495.
Text of
New York City Department of Park's historical marker
Durante,
Dianne.
Forgotten Delights: The Producers (2003), pp. 103-10, with a
long contemporary description of Ericsson's meeting with the Navy board.
Ericsson is also mentioned in the Introduction as the first
outdoor sculpture in Manhattan to capture my interest (pp. 9-10).
On the Forgotten
Delights website,
a long piece on Ericsson is one of the first I wrote for the FD
site; it includes recommendations of a places to visit near Ericsson.
On the Forgotten
Delights blog:
entry of 12/24/2006.
Ericsson is
discussed at the beginning of the
Battery Park podcast, which I uploaded to the Forgotten Delights
website in December 2006.
Taft, Lorado. History of Sculpture
(Macmillan, 1930), pp. 264, 267:
Though strongly drawn in the direction of ideal
sculpture, Mr. Hartley has for some years past devoted most of his
time to portrait busts, and he is now somewhat of a victim to his
great reputation for this class of work. The public will not let him
do anything else. A bust by Hartley is considered by many a synonym
for the most precise and authentic characterization possible.
Nothing could be more admirable than the conscience which the
sculptor shows in these closely studied works. Nothing could be more
penetrating. One submits to him with the feeling that the X-rays are
to be turned on; that not only the uttermost wrinkle will be noted,
but that the innermost thought is to be revealed. The sitter
observes in the end with deep gratitude that professional etiquette
has prevailed; the sculptor has not told everything, but it has been
a narrow escape - he could have done so if he had wished to. … When
Mr. Hartley is at his best he has few rivals, in this country at
least, for close, intimate, unflinching characterization. Others may
generalize, giving a phase of the man - a view that is effective and
even masterful when seen in the proper lighting; but Mr. Hartley's
searching studies present the very man himself - they will stand any
light and any approach.
American National Biography: Cavanaugh,
Michael A. "Ericsson, John";
http://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00220.html (American National
Biography Online Feb. 2000).
New York Times obituary, 3/9/1889: "Death of
John Ericsson. A Remarkable and Useful Career Ended"; and 3/12/1889 on
his obsequies.
NOTE:
- In the New York Times online database,
the Monitor is known as "Ericsson's Battery" until its
launch.
- The ship that became the Confederacy's first
ironclad was christened the Merrimack, but the "k" seems to
have been deep-sixed even before Union troops sunk the ship in
Hampton Roads, soon after the South seceded. Most historians refer
to her as the Merrimac even though the Confederates renamed
her the Virginia.
Ericsson's account of the building of the
Monitor appears in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, v. 1
(New York, 1887), pp. 750 and 730-744, with many technical
specifications.
New York Times 1/31/1862: "Launch of the
Ericsson Battery." 3/10/1862 and 3/13/1862 on the battle of the
Monitor and the Merrimac.
Strong, George Templeton. Diary (New York:
Macmillan, 1952), 3:209-10 (entry for 2/27/1862) and 3:216 (entry for
4/9/1862).
Stiles, T.J., ed. In Their Own Words: Civil War
Commanders (Perigee Trade, 1995), pp. 67-69 on the importance of the
battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac; pp. 69-75 for
the launch of the Monitor and an account of the Battle of the
Ironclads by S. Dana Greene, executive officer of the Monitor.
New York Times 4/19/1862: "The Naval
Revolution, Interesting Discussion in the British House of Commons,
Opinions of the Premier."
New York Times 9/14/1890 quotes Thomas
Rowland, one of Ericsson's assistants (excerpted in Forgotten
Delights: The Producers).
Greene, Jack, and Alessandro Massignani.
Ironclads at War. The Origin and Development of the Armored Warship,
1854-1891. Combined Publishing, 1998. Chapter 2 is on the Monitor
and the Merrimac.
Howarth, Stephen. To Shining Sea: A History of
the United States Navy, 1775-1991. (Random House, 1991), pp. 155,
185 on the USS Princeton; pp. 185, 187-90 on the Monitor,
with a good description of the Merrimac.
deKay, James Tertius. Monitor: The Story of the
Legendary Civil War Ironclad and the Man Whose Invention Changed the
Course of History (New York: Walker, 1997) is a recent, well-written
popular account.
Ward, Geoffrey C., Ric Burns, Ken Burns. The
Civil War, An Illustrated History (New York: Knopf, 1990), as
photographs of the Monitor on pp. 98-102.
Clarke, Wendy Mitman. "Pieces of History."
Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 2002, pp. 62-70.
The site for the
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary has photos of parts of the
Monitor where it sunk off Cape Hatteras.
On the devastating fires in early New York that
Ericsson's fire engine helped control, see Essay 45 in
Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan, on the Firemen's Memorial.
On the engine itself, see the site of the
Varmland Fire Historical Club.
1. The surface textures of MacMonnies' Nathan
Hale, 1890 (OMOM Essay 8), and Partridge's Thomas
Jefferson, 1914 (Essay 50), were both influenced by works of the
French sculptor Auguste Rodin, most famous for his
Thinker, 1880. Compare the surface texture of Ericsson to
the texture of those works.
2. Does Ericsson as portrayed in this sculpture
remind you of anyone you know? Which details make you think so?
3. The purpose of art is to show you something
important. Based on the sculptures erected in the years following the
Civil War, New Yorkers clearly felt that inventiveness, courage and
patriotism were important values that deserved commemoration. If you
could erect a statue today in a prominent place such as Battery Park,
who or what would the statue represent? What values would it
commemorate?
4. Do you agree with the following assessment of
the cause of the Civil War, 1861-1865? What other causes have you heard
suggested, and are they more essential or more concrete than this one?
Despite many complexities, one ideological
issue was at the center of the conflict between the North and the
South - individualism versus statism - and it took the form of one
concrete alternative: individual freedom versus chattel slavery.
Individualism - the dominant theme of the American Constitution -
places the individual over a government that is strictly limited to
the protection of the freedom of the individual. Statism, on the
other hand, places the government over the individual, and enables
the former to violate the rights of the latter. … (John Lewis, "William
Tecumseh Sherman and the Moral Impetus for Victory," The
Objective Standard, Summer 2006, p. 23; entire article, pp.
21-55)
- Eric Daniels' History of America (part 3):
Expanding and Securing the Union, 1836-1877, is an excellent
overview of the United States before, during, and after the Civil
War. The other four parts of his History of America are also
principled overviews of American history of the sort taught all too
seldom in American schools.
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