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SCULPTURE OF THE MONTH #10

INDEPENDENCE FLAGPOLE
(Charles F. Murphy Memorial Flagpole)

Artist: Anthony de Francisci
Granite base: Perry Coke Smith
Dedicated: 1930

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Center of Union Square. The lawn around the Flagpole  is fenced off from pedestrians, although at certain times of the day, on certain days of the week (as the Parks Department wills) it's accessible. Bronze reliefs, 9.5' high, encircle the base of the flagpole.

About the statue and the subject                                             Back to top

The base of this flagpole is easy to miss but worth examining. On its south side is the entire Declaration of Independence, cast in bronze, with the names of all the signers. On the west side, a series of reliefs shows the effects of tyranny. On the east, the reliefs show the effects of liberty, culminating in a woman holding an infant whose head is "haloed" with thirteen starts, representing the original thirteen American states. (See more photos, below.)

Admittedly there are flaws in the execution of the relief - some of the anatomy and foreshortening aren't as they should be. But it's so refreshing to see a work celebrating political freedom (compare the postures and emotions of the figures on the east side with the downtrodden figures on the west) that I'm willing to excuse quite a lot.

Charles F. Murphy, after whom this flagpole base is (or is not) named, was born in a tenement on the Lower East Side in 1858, and became the leader of New York's Democratic political machine, Tammany Hall, in 1902. He was influential (ahem!) in the careers of Mayors Gaynor and Hylan, Governors Dix, Sulzer and Alfred E. Smith, and Senator Robert F. Wagner. Widely regarded as the most effective Democratic machine politician in the city's history, he died in 1924 with an estate of $2 million, the sources of which (notes the Encyclopedia of New York, p. 783) "remain unclear." For more on Murphy's power base and financial resources, see the entry in American National Biography.

This flagpole was erected on the site of an earlier flagpole raised by the Tammany Society, whose last headquarters were at the southwest corner of Union Square East and 17th Street - note the red Tammany cap in that building's pediment. Murphy's friends and followers wanted the new flagpole named after him, but others objected that a memorial to such a man was inappropriate in a park that included Lincoln, Washington and Lafayette. (see Nearby Sculptures.) The flagpole was finally raised in honor of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Nearby sculptures                                                                                 Back to top

• Abraham Lincoln, north end of Union Square, on a line with 16th St. By Henry Kirke Brown (who also did the equestrian Washington at the south end of Union Square), 1868.
• Marquis de Lafayette, Union Square at East 16th Street. Honored in America for his part in the Revolutionary War. Sculpted by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi in 1873, before his Statue of Liberty, dedicated 1884. 
• George Washington (equestrian portrait), south side of Union Square, facing 14th St., between University Place and Broadway. By Henry Kirke Brown, 1855 (cf. Abraham Lincoln, above).  Washington's outstretched hand is reproduced, large scale, high on the facade of the building on Union Square South that is home to Virgin Music. It's part of a bizarre sculpture on that facade, whose meaning I've heard about at least five times. But since the hand is now divorced from its sculpture and put in completely different (abstract) context, the "meaning" is completely arbitrary and I've forgotten it again, and again, and again.

• Union Square Drinking Fountain, also known as Charity, or the James Fountain. West side of Union Square between 15th and 16th Sts. By Karl Adolph Donndorf, 1881. One of the favorite projects of temperance advocates during the nineteenth century was to erect fountains throughout the city (such as the one on the base of this statue) so that residents would have easy access to drinking water, and so be less inclined to guzzle alcohol. Before New York acquired a reliable water supply from upstate New York in the mid-nineteenth century, drinking alcohol made it less likely that you would (literally) die of thirst - at least, of the results of quenching your thirst  with contaminated water.

• Mohandas Gandhi. Southwest corner of Union Square, near the corner of 14th Street and Union Square West. Kantilal B. Patel, 1986. This hunched, emaciated figure was hauled off to storage a few years ago when Union Square was thoroughly renovated. I enjoyed his absence.

• Washington Irving, in front of Washington Irving High School, 40 Irving Place at East 17th Street. A colossal bronze bust by Friedrich Beer, 1885. "I am always at a loss," said Irving, "to know how much to believe of my own stories." His Knickerbocker's History of New York fooled many of the people much of the time.

• Peter Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant Square, between 15th and 17th Sts., west of Second Avenue (on land that was once part of his bouwerie, farm). Stuyvesant was the director-general of New Netherland before it was taken over by the British and renamed "New York." By Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1936.

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More photos                                                                               Back to top

	Independence Flagpole, west side and Declaration of Independence
	Independence Flagpole, east side