History
The drive to erect a monument to Grant was begun in the 1890s by Society of the Army of the Tennessee.
Work on the memorial was begun in 1902 as the largest ever commissioned by Congress at the time, was created by sculptor Henry Merwin Shrady and architect Edward Pearce Casey. Sculptor Edmund Amateis assisted Shrady as the monument neared completion in 1921. Shrady spent 20 years of his life working on the memorial and died, stressed and overworked, two weeks before its dedication in 1922.
The sculptures were cast in bronze at the Roman Bronze Works in New York. Construction on the site of the memorial began in 1909 when the marble superstructure and the four bronze lions were installed. The Artillery Group was installed in 1912, the Cavalry Group in 1916, and the bronze equestrian statue of Grant in 1920. The memorial was dedicated on the 100th anniversary of Grant's birth, April 27, 1922. Shrady having died, the infantry panels on the base of Grant's pedestal were completed by sculptor Sherry Fry based on Shrady's sketches and installed in 1924. The Grant Memorial composes the center of a three-part sculptural group including the James A. Garfield Monument to the south and the Peace Monument to the north.
Read more about this topic: Ulysses S. Grant Memorial
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)