History, Natural History & the Arts
The final six sculptures in the Lock Tenders Tribute Monument in Lockport, Niagara County, NY were installed and a formal dedication took place in September.
Lewiston sculptor Susan Geissler created the cast bronze figures to recreate an original photograph taken on the same steps in 1897 by Frank Bernard Clench (F.B. Clench). [Read more…] about Lock Tenders Tribute Monument Dedicated
A statue of Philip J. Schuyler (1733-1804) has been removed from outside of Albany’s City Hall. Mayor Kathy Sheehan ordered the statue removed in 2020 because Schuyler was a slaveholder. Sheehan said at the time that removing the statue was one way to acknowledge the enduring legacy of slavery. [Read more…] about Albany’s Philip Schuyler Statue Removed From City Hall
Arlington National Cemetery (Arlington) is removing its Confederate Memorial, as mandated by the Congress’s authorizing the Naming Commission to rename and/or remove Department of Defense assets that commemorate the Confederate States of America (CSA) or any person who voluntarily served with the CSA against the United States. [Read more…] about Arlington National Cemetery Removing Confederate Memorial
My first brush with the artifacts of history came when I was a youngster on a family vacation to Cooperstown, Otsego County, NY. I found the famous Baseball Hall of Fame, with its baggy uniforms, battered bats and flattened fielders’ mitts, decidedly ho-hum. I couldn’t wait to get to the nearby Farmers’ Museum and see something that I had heard of with wonder: the Cardiff Giant. [Read more…] about There Were Giants in the Earth in Those Days
As New York City reached its Silver Jubilee in 1923, one of the ways it celebrated 25 years since its formation as a greater city uniting the five boroughs was to have residents vote on the six people who had done the city the most good. Who made the Big Apple’s early honor list? [Read more…] about Archer M. Huntington: Titan Arts Patron of New York City
The New York State Museum in Albany has acquired the Women’s Rights Pioneers Central Park Monument model. The statue features three nationally recognized leaders of the women’s rights movement, all hailing from New York State: Sojourner Truth (Ulster County), Susan B. Anthony (Rochester), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Johnstown, Seneca Falls, and NYC). It will be included as part of the Museum’s new exhibition, “Women Who Lead.” [Read more…] about State Museum Acquires Women’s Rights Pioneers Central Park Monument Model
In this episode of the Becoming Barnum podcast, newly discovered letters from P.T. Barnum reveal details about his activities during the Gen. Tom Thumb tour in Scotland offering insight into Barnum’s anxieties, including his quest for a new play for Gen. Tom Thumb. They also shed light on Barnum’s commissioning of the “Anatomical Venus,” A life-sized, dissectible wax woman, for his American Museum in New York. [Read more…] about Becoming Barnum: The Anatomical Venus & Tom Thumb in Scotland
In the mid-20th century, Americans had a great enthusiasm for all manner of keepsakes and mementos cast in bronze. On October 17, 1960, the National Hot Dog Council presented a life-size hot dog cast in bronze on a marble base to Republican vice-presidential candidate Henry Cabot Lodge Jr (1902-1985).
In the blur of events during the hard-fought presidential campaign, Lodge came to mistakenly believe that he had received the unusual gift during a visit to Nathan’s, the famous hot dog emporium in New York City. [Read more…] about Henry Cabot Lodge’s Bronze Hot Dog
In 1866, NY State Geologist James Hall received a message from T.G. Younglove, an official at Harmony Mills in Cohoes, New York, informing Hall that while conducting some excavations to expand the mill they uncovered a “great pothole” at the foot of Cohoes Falls where the Mohawk River begins to empty into the Hudson.
The “great pothole” contained a large jawbone “of some unknown beast,” much larger than that of an elephant. [Read more…] about Science & Suckers: The Cohoes Mastodon & The Cardiff Giant
Nationalism of the nineteenth century represents very different values to those of our era. With the present rise of frenzied flag-waving and militant xenophobia, it is hard to understand the cult status achieved by foreign revolutionary figures such as Lafayette, who was honored as the “French Hero of the American Revolution.”
In 1878 a bust of Giuseppe Mazzini was unveiled in New York City‘s Central Park. A decade later, on the sixth anniversary of his death, Giuseppe Garibaldi was memorialized with a bronze statue in Washington Square Park. Why were these relatively unknown Italian insurgents given such a prestigious presence in New York? [Read more…] about Italian Heroes In New York: What Purpose Did Statues Serve?