Reginald E. Beauchamp - Artworks

Artworks

Beauchamp created 25 works of public art, most of which were installed in Philadelphia. They include:

• The Living Flame Memorial, erected in 1976 in Franklin Square as the city's monument to honor city police and firefighters fallen in the line of duty.
• The Hero Mosaic in Philadelphia City Hall.
• The Vietnam Bronze War Memorial at Edison High School. The North Philly school lost 66 former students in the Vietnam War, more than any other U.S. high school. Tony Burgee, class of 1961, led the effort to create the memorial.
• The Signing of the Declaration of Independence at the Mellon Independence Center mall.
• A bronze of Dave Zinkoff, a veteran announcer of Philadelphia sporting events, at the Philadelphia Spectrum arena.
• A "plastic glass spire" at Mercy Hospital of Philadelphia.
• Whispering Bells of Freedom (1976), outside the African American Museum in downtown Philadelphia.

In 1986, two Beauchamp bronze bas-reliefs of the face of Civil War hero George C. Platt were installed at the approaches to the George C. Platt Bridge over the Schuylkill River. They were commissioned by Platt's great-great-grandson, Lawrence Griffin Platt, who raised $10,000 with the help of a former Gulf Oil Co. executive, and were mounted on poles at either end of the bridge. Both were later stolen; the first in 1987, and the second some time later. A $500 reward offered by the Philadelphia Daily News in 2002 was unsuccessful in securing their return.

Beauchamp once hung colored ribbons from the statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall to nearby buildings, creating the look of a maypole more than 500 feet tall.

In 1967, he unsuccessfully proposed a $5 million, 14-story bust of Benjamin Franklin to be mounted on Belmont Plateau in the city's Fairmount Park. It was to be made of vertical stainless-steel tubes, six inches in diameter and one inch apart, that would have been lit from the interior of the sculpture.

Among the privately held works by Beauchamp is a sculptural rendition of John Trumbull's painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, installed at the Philadelphia Protestant Home in the Lawndale neighborhood.

Another is "Philadelphia Then & Now," a 53-by-68-inch painting commissioned by the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1947 to commemorate the newspaper’s 100th anniversary. It depicts the city as it appeared in 1847, with the contemporary skyline floating in the clouds above. The painting was exhibited at Newman Gallery, hung for 25 years at the Poor Richard Club, shifted into private hands in the mid-1970s, and was offered at auction in 2009.