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SCULPTURE OF THE MONTH #2

For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.

Firemen's Memorial

Artist: Attilio Piccirilli.
Architect: H. van Buren Magonigle.
Executed 1912 (dedicated 1913)

Location, size, medium
About the statue and the subject
Other nearby sculptures
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Location, size, medium                                                          Back to top

Riverside Drive and West 100th St. The bronze relief faces west; since it's polished, there may be some glare in the late afternoon. With the sun behind it in the morning, the details are very clear. The relief (19’ x  8’) is flanked by two over-lifesize groups in marble. In front of the relief are a fountain basin and a semi-circular platform with benches and balustrade, approached by a flight of steps. The bronze relief is a copy of the original marble relief, which had seriously deteriorated. Inscription on the back (facing 100^th St.): “To the men of the Fire Department of the City of New York who died at the call of duty, soldiers in a war that never ends, this memorial is dedicated by the people of a grateful city. Erected MCMXII.”

About the statue and the subject                                                 Back to top

Dedicated to the “soldiers in a war that never ends,” the Firemen’s Memorial is one of the most spectacular monuments in Riverside Park. Mounting the sweep of steps from Riverside Drive, you first see a huge, gleaming relief with three galloping horses hauling a fire engine while two men at the left struggle to shift debris. In the background, a crowd of spectators is sketched in low relief.

The urgent call, the adrenalin rush, the fight to save lives and property: those are the rewarding and exciting parts of the fireman’s job, and it’s fitting that they are the dominant feature of this monument. But firefighting is also perilous, as shown in the marble groups at either side of the relief. On the left a woman holds the limp body of her husband, killed in the line of duty. The pose of these two figures is reminiscent of a pieta, a common subject in medieval and Renaissance art in which a grieving Madonna supports the body of Christ. (Michelangelo’s Pieta is the most famous.) The resemblance to the pieta immediately brings in two ideas: that the firefighter who dies in the line of duty is making the ultimate sacrifice for others, and that those who survive feel both devastating grief and pride for his courage.

In the group at the right, a young child looks up questioningly at the woman whose arm encircles him. From her resemblance to the woman in the pair of figures on the left, and from the fact that she holds a fireman’s helmet on her lap and sits next to a fire hydrant, we know this must be the fireman’s widow about to explain why the child’s father won’t ever be coming home. I find this pair more wrenching than the woman holding her husband’s dead body, because the child leans in so trustingly, and woman will soon have to emerge from the numbness of shock to explain what happened.

The monument’s peaceful site, slightly away from the traffic of Riverside Drive and with a splendid view west over the Hudson River, encourages visitors to pause and ponder the bravery of firefighters in the face of constant, life-threatening danger. Why is the message still so easy to read after nearly a hundred years? The drama and urgency in the fire engine’s movement are obvious because the artist has emphasized the rush of the horses, rather than the details of the fire engine (which must have been notably old-fashioned within a decade or two). The pairs of figures at either end are classically draped and timeless—painstakingly reproduced costumes of ca. 1910 would be a distraction.

In 1908, the Right Reverend Henry C. Potter proposed a monument to commemorate firemen who died in the line of duty. The memorial committee, headed by Bishop Potter and later by Isidor Straus, raised $50,500 by popular subscription and another $40,000 in public funds for this memorial. Piccirilli and Magonigle, who collaborated as sculptor and architect, also executed the Maine Monument on the northwest side of Columbus Circle--another grand, dramatic tribute to men who died in the line of duty.

 Bibliography and further reading: Margot Gayle and Michele Cohen, The Art Commission and Municipal Art Society Guide to Manhattan’s Outdoor Sculpture,  p. 285.

Nearby sculptures                                                                                 Back to top

* Joan of Arc (Riverside Drive and West 93rd St.): bronze equestrian statue honoring the 500^th anniversary of the birth of the Maid of Orleans. Another over-life-size equestrian statue by Anna Hyatt Huntington (one of the great American sculptors) is El Cid Campeador, on display at the Hispanic Society of America at 156th St. and Broadway. Many more of her works are on view at Brookgreen Gardens near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

* Straus Memorial (West 106th St. between Broadway and West End Ave.):  a lovely figure erected to honor Isidor Straus, who chaired the committee for the Firemen’s Memorial, helped transform Macy’s into New York’s premier department store, and died on the Titanic.

* Franz Sigel (Riverside Drive and W. 106th St.): bronze equestrian sculpture of a Civil-War officer who became a leader of the German-American community in New York.

* Samuel Tilden (Riverside Drive and West 112th St.): honors a governor of New York who exposed the corruption of New York City’s Tweed Ring in the 1860s and ran for president in 1876, winning a majority of the popular vote but losing in the electoral college by a single vote to Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden was the driving force behind the creation of the New York Public Library, to which he bequeathed six million dollars and his enormous book collection.

* Lajos Kossuth (Riverside Drive and West 113th St.): honors a Hungarian patriot (1802-94).

Stop–look–think                                                                                 Back to top

How can the Firemen’s Memorial help us choose an appropriate memorial to those who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11? The 9/11 memorial is for a very specific recent event that was traumatic, of worldwide importance, and remains of intimate concern for thousands of people who are alive and still grieving. To have a reasonable debate on the memorial—rather than merely an emotional shouting match—several fundamental questions need to be answered, and they’re the same ones that had to be answered 90 years ago when the Firemen’s Memorial was designed.

The three fundamental questions are:

1.           Who and what are we honoring with the memorial? The Firemen’s Memorial honors only firemen who died in the line of duty, and it honors not their mortal remains (no bodies are buried there), but their spirits. At the World Trade Center, do we want to commemorate everyone who died there in a single monument? And do we want to consecrate the ground because of the minute physical remains that are doubtless still there, or erect a monument to the spirits of those who died?

2.           For whose sake is this memorial being built? Memorials are for benefit of those still living. The Firemen’s Memorial is a place for meditation. Is the 9/11 memorial to be a quiet place for families and friends of the victims? Is it for a larger audience of New Yorkers, Americans, and all who grieve for the destruction and loss of life on 9/11?

3.           What statement do we want to make with this monument? The Firemen’s Memorial says that firemen who die in the line of duty do so bravely, in a worthwhile cause, and that their grief-stricken loved ones appreciate what they chose to do. What do we want to say at the WTC? That 9/11 was a tragic event we’ll never forget? That we desperately miss the family members, friends and colleagues who died there? That we respect the qualities that earned them jobs at one of the world’s busiest financial centers? That we can’t be cowed by terrorist acts? (I’ve discussed this issue in more detail in an op-ed for the Ayn Rand Institute: “Monoliths, Wells, Mounds: What Is It We're Trying to Say Here?”)

The answers to these three questions—who we’re honoring, what we want to say about them, and who the audience is—determine the answers to many narrower questions.

• Where should the memorial be? If we’re making a national statement rather than creating a place for quiet meditation, the appropriate site might be quite different.

• What size should the memorial be? Again, it depends on the purpose: a monument meant to draw tourists will have to be larger, and matters such as pedestrian traffic flow will have to be a consideration.

• What form should the memorial take: a list of names, a figurative sculpture, an abstract sculpture? That depends which can best express the message we want to convey about these people, that time, that place.

• Who should pay for the memorial? If the government funds it, then the final decision on its site, size and message will probably rest with a panel of art critics, and the message will be the message they choose. If the funds are raised wholly or in part by public subscription (as they were for the Firemen’s Memorial), then the choice of subject and size, at least, can be by public vote, and are likely to satisfy more people.         

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