Statues and Appearance
Statues of Nathan Hale are based on idealized archetypes: no contemporaneous portraits of him have been found. Documents and letters reveal Hale was an informed, practical, detail-oriented man who planned ahead. Of his appearance and demeanor, fellow soldier Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick wrote that Nathan Hale had blue eyes, flaxen blond hair, darker eyebrows, and stood slightly taller than average height (of the time), with mental powers of a sedate mind and pious; Bostwick wrote:
…I can now in imagination see his person & hear his voice- his person I should say was a little above the common stature in height, his shoulders of a moderate breadth, his limbs strait & very plump: regular features— very fair skin— blue eyes— flaxen or very light hair which was always kept short— his eyebrows a shade darker than his hair & his voice rather sharp or piercing— his bodily agility was remarkable. I have seen him follow a football and kick it over the tops of the trees in the Bowery at New York, (an exercise which he was fond of)— his mental powers seemed to be above the common sort— his mind of a sedate and sober cast, & he was undoubtedly Pious; for it was remark’d that when any of the soldiers of his company were sick he always visited them & usually Prayed for & with them in their sickness.Hale has been honored with two particularly famous standing images:
- A statue designed by Frederick William MacMonnies was erected in 1890 at City Hall Park, New York. The statue established Hale's modern idealized square-jawed image.
- A statue of Hale, sculpted 1908-12 by Bela Lyon Pratt, was cast in 1912 and stands in front of Connecticut Hall where he resided while at Yale. Copies of this sculpture stand at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts; the Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry; the Connecticut Governor's Mansion in Hartford; Fort Nathan Hale in New Haven; Mitchell College in New London, Connecticut; the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.; Tribune Tower in Chicago; and at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia.
There is also a memorial for him located in Huntington, New York where he landed for his fatal spying mission, as well as a marker in Freese Park, Norwalk, Connecticut that is denoted as the embarkation point. A 45-foot (14 m) obelisk known as the Captain Nathan Hale Monument was erected in his honor in 1846 in his birthplace of Coventry, Connecticut.
Statues of Nathan Hale are also located throughout the United States, including at the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Fairfax County, Virginia; the Federal Triangle in Washington, D.C.; in downtown Chicago; on the campus of Phillips Academy; in the Tulane University Law School reading room; and at the corner of Summit and Portland Avenues in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
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