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SALUTES
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SALUTES: July
Many sculptures in Manhattan are linked to important dates in U.S. or world history. Here are a few for July.
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July 8, 2005: Salute to the City Beautiful Movement (part 2): Surrogate Court
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King Jagiello of Poland defeats the Teutonic Knights at Grunewald
July 4, 1776: Independence Day
See my comments on the
Independence Flagpole in Union
Square.
July 4, 1807: Birth of Giuseppe Garibaldi
*
Giuseppe Garibaldi,
by Giovanni Turini, 1888. Washington Square, east of the central fountain.
Garibaldi and Mazzini (whose statue stands in Central Park) are celebrated as the men responsible in the 1850s-1870s for unifying Italy from eight separate states ruled by monarchs and the pope into the state that we know today. Although it was Mazzini who introduced Garibaldi to revolutionary ideas in the 1830s, the two later disagreed on aims and methods. Mazzini’s philosophy smacks of socialism. (See the March Salute to Mazzini.) Garibaldi professed to favor republican government, although he became convinced that given the low level of education and the political apathy of the Italian people, it was justifiable for a an all-powerful leader to force them to become free. Mazzini called Garibaldi a potential dictator, a socialist, an ignoramus, a man with a face like a lion and as stupid. Garibaldi in turn described Mazzini as “a man of theory, not of practice, who is always speaking of the people though he does not know who the people are.” (Both descriptions from Denis Mack Smith, Garibaldi: A Great Life in Brief, 1956, pp. 187-8.)
During one of his periods of exile from Italy Garibaldi spent nine months in New York, helping manufacture a smokeless candle invented by fellow Italian Antonio Meucci, who also did early work on the telephone. At 420 Tompkins Ave. in Staten Island (near the Verrazzano Bridge) you can visit the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum (http://www.garibaldimeuccimuseum.org/index.html ).
July 8, 2005: Salute to the City Beautiful Movement (part 2).
Click here for Part 1
* Sculptures on the
Surrogate's Court, by Philip Martiny and Henry Kirke Bush-Brown. Completed
1907. 31 Chambers St. at Centre. Take binoculars, or take photos with a
digital camera with at least 3 MP and a 3x optical zoom, so that you can
see the details on your computer monitor at home.
Sculpture produced during the City Beautiful movement of the 1890s to 1910s aimed to improve passers-by. The Pulitzer Memorial Fountain was intended to elevate them by its beauty. The Surrogate's Court was meant to edify viewers by showing historical figures who were worthy of emulation, and the values and technical achievements that would bring future progress. Herewith, a list of sculptures on the Surrogate's Court, as identified in the indispensable Art Commission and Municipal Art Society Guide to Manhattan's Outdoor Sculpture (Gayle & Cohen), with brief comments from the equally indispensable Encyclopedia of New York City.
SOUTH FACADE (the principal one), facing Chambers St., best viewed from the plaza east of City Hall
Flanking
the main entrance: New York in Its Infancy and New York in
Revolutionary Times (by Philip Martiny). In Infancy, New York
(the central figure) wears a crown representing royal rule, and carries
books and a paper; to the left and right of her are an Indian and a Dutch
settler. In Revolutionary Times, New York wears a helmet, carries a
torch in her left hand, and rests her right on a globe. To the left, a
British soldier stands before a shield bearing the motto of Great Britain.
To the right, a woman in 18th-century garb holding flowers stands before a
shield bearing the Stars and Stripes. (Compare
Walking Tour of Figures from American History Active Before 1800.)
On the cornice above the fifth floor (by Philip Martiny):
- David Pietersen De Vries (wearing baggy breeches), Dutch mariner, merchant and patroon who established colonies on Staten Island (1639) at at Tappan (1640). After both were ravaged by Indians De Vries returned to Holland, where he wrote the Korte Historiael (1655), a valuable source for the history of New Netherlands.
- Caleb Heathcote (robed and bewigged), mayor of New York 1711-1714. After emigrating from England in 1692 he served on the governor's council, as a colonel of militia, and surveyor-general of customs for the northern colonies. In 1701 he was granted the manor of Scarsdale (in Westchester County), the last manor granted in the British colonies.
- De Witt Clinton (in a cutaway coat and cape), who was serving either as mayor of New York City or governor of New York State for most of the quarter-century between 1803 and 1828. He was the driving force behind the Erie Canal, which made New York the dominant seaport and commercial center in the United States.
- Abram Stevens Hewitt (in a long frock coat), mayor of New York 1887-1888, son-in-law of Peter Cooper, industrialist, active in the campaign against "Boss" Tweed in the 1870s. He was remembered for his attempts to improve municipal services and end corruption in city politics.
Above: Hone, Stuyvesant, Colden, Duane; figure above them is Heritage.
- Philip Hone (in a cutaway coat), mayor of New York 1825-1826, best known as an indefatigable diarist whose entries cover 1826-1851.
- Peter Stuyvesant (baggy Dutch breeches and a peg leg), last director-general of New Netherlands 1647-1664. Read Shorto's Island at the Center of the World for a good portrait. Note: Whitney's Stuyvesant shows the peg-leg on the other side; see Shorto re which leg Stuyvesant actually lost.
- Cadwallader David Colden (late 18th-c. knee-length coat and waistcoat), mayor of New York 1818-1821, district attorney, militia leader in the War of 1812, member of the State senate. He was grandson of prominent naturalist Cadwallader Colden (d. 1776).
- James Duane (also late 18th-c. coat and waistcoat, carrying a cape), mayor of New York 1784-1789. He was the first mayor appointed after the British evacuation in 1783; and was instrumental in the city's rapid recovery after its devastation during the Revolutionary War. A noted lawyer and jurist, he was a delegate to the first and second Continental Congresses, and United States district judge for the district of New York 1789-1794.
On the roof (by Henry Kirke Bush-Brown), moving from lower to upper figures:
- Maternity (woman holding a child) and Heritage (man instructing a squirming child), on either side of a triple window just above Hewitt and Hone.
- Spring, Summer, Winter, Autumn, caryatids flanking the round attic window
- Philosophy, a semi-reclining, older, bearded male figure on the far left of the round window, looking at a skull (?)
- Poetry, a semi-reclining, younger male figure on the far right of the round window, with scrolls on his lap, holding a profile portrait head on a shield (?)
- Childhood, two children flanking an empty cartouche above the round window
EAST FAÇADE, facing Centre St.
Cornice (Philip Martiny); all female figures, swathed in classical drapery.
- Chemistry, looking at an square object in her hand, with a mechanical contraption at her feet
- Medicine, with a pile of books topped by a skull at her feet
- Industry
- Commerce
- Navigation, with an anchor and rope at her feet
- Industrial Art, with two elaborately decorated vases
- Music
- Architecture, with an architectural model of a Greek temple at her feet
Originally flanking the east entrance: Equity (Authority?) and Justice (Philip Martiny), moved behind the New York County Court House when Centre St. was widened.
Dormer (Henry Kirke Bush-Brown): Recorder and Keeper of Rolls (referring to the building's original function as Hall of Records)
NORTH FAÇADE, facing Reade St.
Cornice (by Philip Martiny)
- Justice
- Electricity
- Printing
- Force
- Tradition
- Iron Age
- Painting
- Sculpture
Around the central window on the attic roof (by Bush-Brown)
- Instruction, on the upper right
- Study, upper left
- Law, lower right (a bearded old man)
- History, lower left
WEST FACADE, facing Elk St. (by Bush-Brown)
- Industry, a semi-reclining male figure, on the left above the triple window
- Commerce, a semi-reclining female figure, on the right above the triple window
Alas, the Surrogate's Court sculptures fail miserably in their didactic purpose. They're too high and there are far too many of them for the viewer to make sense of the message of the whole. Particularly disruptive is the elaborate drapery on the allegorical cornice figures on the east and north sides, which makes it almost impossible to see the attributes (the gizmos, the props) that should allow the viewer to identify each figure.
The sculptors can't be blamed for the fact that later, taller buildings overshadow some of the sculpture on the Surrogate's Court. They can be blamed for not noticing that Lower Manhattan's streets are narrow, and that its buildings were becoming ever taller. The earliest skyscrapers began to appear in the 1870s or 1880s, three or four decades before the Surrogate's Court was completed.
For an example of complex allegorical figures brilliantly executed and yes, highly visible, walk down Broadway to visit Daniel Chester French's Continents at the Customs House, just south of Bowling Green. The figures have enough attributes to make them easily identifiable – yet the attributes never overwhelm the figure. Much more on the Continents will appear in my upcoming book on outdoor sculpture in Manhattan.
Part 3 of this series on the City Beautiful Movement (coming in July or August) will include a discussion of whether art should, in fact, be used for didactic purposes. If you're an impatient sort, read my essay on Christo's Gates.
For more on the architecture of the Surrogate's Court (inside and out), see http://www.nyc-architecture.com/SCC/SCC031.htm .
July
15, 1410: King Jagiello of Poland defeats the Teutonic Knights at
Grunewald
* Jagiello, by Stanislaw Kazmierz Ostrowski, modeled 1908-9, cast 1939. Central Park, north of the 79th St. transverse road, just east of Turtle Pond. Enter the Park at the entrance just south of the Metropolitan Museum, walk west (uphill) until you cross the East Drive, then continue west up the path where the sign directs you to Belvedere Castle. At the fork at the top of the hill bear right and head downhill toward the Pond; the statue's on your right.
When the Declaration of Independence was read in New York in 1776, the statue of King George III at Bowling Green was hauled off its pedestal and melted down for bullets. Since then we have not been prone to erecting statues of monarchs, although a couple are unobtrusively placed on the U.S. Customs House cornice at Bowling Green and the recently cleaned Appellate Court at Madison and 25th St. But why do we have a ferocious-looking, over life-size crowned monarch on a horse scowling across Turtle Pond?
The story begins in the 12th century, when the Teutonic Knights were founded to care for German soldiers wounded on the Crusades in the Holy Land. When no crusades were under way, their assignment was to fight pagans in Eastern Europe. Eventually granted extensive lands in Hungary, Prussia, Livonia and Italy, the Knights became wealthy and influential, even arbitrating disputes between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. (They remind me vividly of the Knights Templars as portrayed in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.) In time, the Knights lusted for more and more land, whether or not it was occupied by pagans.
Lithuania
was the only pagan country left in Europe when its Grand Duke Jagiello
married Jagwiga, Queen of Poland, in 1386, and converted to Christianity.
In a series of mass baptisms, Lithuanians followed suit. This should have
put Lithuania off-limits to the Teutonic Knights, but in 1398 they
nevertheless invaded and occupied part of it.
By 1410 Jagiello and his ally Vytautas had assembled some 50,000 men to take the field against the Knights. Before dawn on July 15, their forces were lined up near Tannenberg. The Knights and their allies (32,000 or so) were arrayed near the town of Grunewald.
But Jagiello refused to attack early in the day, instead letting the Knights sit for hours in the sun, broiling in their heavy plate armor, while his own forces rested in the coolness of the forest. After a few hours, emissaries from the Grand Master of the Knights approached Jagiello and threw two swords at his feet. "Lithuanians and Poles, Dukes Vytautas and Jagiello, if you are afraid to come out and fight, our Grand Master sends you these additional weapons." Brandishing the swords above his head, Jagiello replied, "I accept both your swords and your choice of battleground, but the outcome of this day I entrust to the will of God."
At mid-morning the battle finally began. By sunset the grand master, several hundred knights, and thousands of those fighting for the Knights lay dead. Grunewald marked the beginning of the Knights’ decline: during the next 150 years their possessions in Germany and Eastern Europe were gradually taken over by secular rulers, and one more vestige of the Middle Ages disappeared.
For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.
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