Photo of the Day: World War II Memorial, Washington DC

The debt owed by Americans to the Greatest Generation is enormous. The scope of World War II—a global conflict requiring an all-out effort on the homefront, the service of 16 million members of the U.S. armed forces, and the ultimate sacrifice of more than 400,000 of these Americans—is staggering.

So is the World War II Memorial, designed by the former chief of the Rhode Island School of Design, Friedrich St. Florian, and dedicated in 2004. I visited it nine years later, when I took this photo of its Rainbow Pool with its impressive fountains.

In keeping with this sprawling conflict, this DC site is immense, with 24 bronze bas-relief panels and granite columns telling the story of the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters.

I particularly like this quote inscribed in this stone architecture by President Harry S. Truman, in an address broadcast to the armed forces on Apr. 17, 1945:

“Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.”

Photo of the Day: Irish Famine Monument, Cambridge MA

Some monuments—notably, those honoring Confederate heroes—are built in a relatively short period of time. Others—including this one, which I photographed on a trip to Boston and its surrounding area in 2008—are erected far later.

The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s resulted in an estimated 1 million deaths and another million who emigrated to escape starvation, disease and grinding poverty. But those statistics don’t even begin to convey the trauma suffered by those who endured it. It affected the destinies of two countries—Ireland, which could never forget that a blight affected their potatoes but their British overlords produced the starvation; and the United States, where the Irish became the prototypical immigrant group.

For more than a century, the memory of that catastrophe was an open wound, best left to be forgotten by those who lived through it and their descendants. But in time, as the Irish carved out their niche in the United States, they not only began to probe the causes and effects of the famine, but also sought to commemorate it in tangible form, as in statuary.

Canbridge's Irish Famine Monument, located on Cambridge Common and cast by Maurice Carron, shows a family torn apart by the Great Hunger. It was dedicated in 1997, on the 150^th anniversary of the deadliest year of the famine, by Irish President Mary Robinson.

Carved on the memorial’s base is the central lesson learned about this massive tragedy: “"Never again should a people starve in a world of plenty."

Photo of the Day: Woman With Child, Brooklyn War Memorial, Cadman Plaza Park, Brooklyn NY

This image is a detail of a sculpture on the right side of the Brooklyn War Memorial in Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn. On the left side of the memorial, which I posted about 3½ years ago, is a male warrior. What you see here, bookending it, is a mother and child—what, in effect, the warrior is fighting for.

Both larger-than-life images were molded by the sculptor Charles Keck (1875–1951), who also created the statue of Fr. Francis Duffy (chaplain of New York’s famed 69^th Regiment during WWI), which now anchors the theater distinct in midtown Manhattan, in the square named for the priest.

Photo of the Day: Southwestern Pennsylvania World War II Memorial, Pittsburgh PA

I took this picture in late June of last year, while on a weekend stop in Pittsburgh. The Southwestern Pennsylvania World War II Memorial, erected in Point State Park – the downtown confluence of the Steel City’s three rivers—was dedicated in 2013, in recognition of the region’s significant contribution to the war effort. 

Its 16 granite panels recount experiences ranging from Medal-of-Honor heroism to defense production on the homefront. Further enhancing the memorial’s educational component—which otherwise, with the passage of time, would increasingly be lost to popular memory—are eight other text panels that explain events that shaped the region, led to the war and determined its conclusion.

The memorial now attracts an estimated 50,000 annual visitors. But, for those who can’t go there—and even for those who have made it—I would also recommend visiting the memorial’s Website, which features interviews with five veterans of the conflict—among the area’s dwindling survivors of “The Greatest Generation.”

Photo of the Day: ‘Spirit of American Youth,’ George Westinghouse Memorial, Pittsburgh PA

I have already posted about the lily pond and the plaques at the George Westinghouse Memorial. But this statue, which I saw while being driven around in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park, led me to wonder why it looked so oddly recognizable, even though I had never been to this site nor seen this statue.

As I approached “The Spirit of American Youth” that day two months ago, I saw that it had been created by Daniel Chester French, best known for the nearly godlike seated figure of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. (See this post for my discussion 10 years ago of the creation of that DC landmark.)

After that iconic memorial, almost anything else would appear to be anti-climactic. But nothing by a supreme craftsman, let alone a genius, is without interest, and this work certainly qualifies. 

According to Harold Holzer’s 2019 biography Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French, the sculptor asked the Westinghouse memorial committee about molding a figure of the inventor himself. But the committee requested something more oblique, less in French’s traditional realistic mode: “a ‘modern’ masterpiece.” 

The result was a bronze statue of a schoolboy, dressed in a hooded sweater and standing in the prow of a boat, his hat in one hand and books in the other. He is so astonished by what he has just been reading about Westinghouse that he has absent-mindedly crumple his cap.

On its own terms, the statue was accomplished, as might be expected from one of the nation’s foremost sculptors. Yet not everyone agreed on the appropriateness of the product. 

Although some critics hailed it as a fine portrayal of American boyhood,” others thought it did not rank with French’s other high-profile commissions such as the “Minute Man” of Concord or the “Republic” statue of the 1893 Colombian Exposition of Chicago, let alone the Lincoln Memorial.

It is possible, had he been allowed to move ahead with his original idea, that French would have brought unsurpassed knowledge and feeling to a likeness of Westinghouse (whom he knew from summers in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts). That he didn’t give up entirely on that idea can be seen in the fact that he exhibited his original bust of the inventor in the annual Stockbridge Art Show, near their summer homes.

The Westinghouse statue turned out to be French’s last major project; he died a year later at age 80. Maybe this image of a youth in the grip of inspiration owed something to his own memories of youth, when he was encouraged in his artistic studies by Anna Pratt, the sister of Little Women novelist Louisa May Alcott.

Photo of the Day: Detail, George Westinghouse Memorial, Pittsburgh PA

Earlier this week, I posted this link on the George Westinghouse Memorial in Pittsburgh. The picture accompanying it concentrated on the lovely lily pond on the site, while my text recounted how the memorial was built and, more recently, renovated. But today, I thought I would focus on who is being commemorated here, and why: Westinghouse.

In the detail seen here, Westinghouse appears between a mechanic and an engineer. The latter two figures—created in full relief, enabling the memorial to be viewed on all sides—symbolize those who would translate his vision into reality. Three independent solid bronze panels to the side, sculpted by Paul Fjelde in a semi-circular curve, list Westinghouse’s achievements, including:

*the first substitution of high-voltage electricity for operating a main-line railway;

*steam turbines becoming a basic source of universal electricity;

*Niagara Falls’ water serving as the basis of a great power system;

*The alternating current system, first exhibited at the Chicago Exposition of 1893;

*The air brake, which increased railroad safety and efficiency; and

*Modern signaling systems derived from Westinghouse’s innovations.

In widely contrasting ways, railroads played key roles not only in the business but personal lives of Westinghouse and his great rival, Thomas Edison. “The Wizard of Menlo Park” attributed his deafness to a traumatic accident he suffered as a 12-year-old “news butcher” on the Grand Trunk Railway run between Port Huron and Detroit. Although Edison saw the affliction as “not… a handicap but a help to me,” as it shut him off from distracting small talk, it also encouraged a single-mindedness that led him to neglect food, sleep and family.

Westinghouse’s experience with the railroad was far happier: he met his wife Marguerite while riding the train—and thereafter, even when they were apart, he telegraphed or telephoned her.

Photo of the Day: Lily Pond, George Westinghouse Memorial, Pittsburgh PA

While I was being driven around in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park a few weeks ago, this lily pond practically beckoned me to get out and photograph it. My fascination increased with each step I took, especially when I discovered that a) this was the George Westinghouse Memorial for one of the great figures of America’s Industrial Revolution, and b) that creator of the sculptures here was Daniel Chester French, the genius behind the Lincoln Memorial.

The film The Current War came and went too quickly for me to catch this past fall. When it comes to DVD—especially now that I’ve had a chance to see the George Westinghouse Memorial—I will be sure to see it, for in many ways its subject matter—the struggle between Westinghouse and Thomas Edison over their two competing power systems (alternating and direct current, respectively)—is crucial to understanding the course of American business in the last century and a quarter.

Westinghouse was neither as flamboyant nor eccentric as Edison, but he richly merited this beautiful point of stillness in Schenley Park. In 1930, 16 years after his death, roughly 55,000 employees at his former firms chipped in to raise $200,000 for this memorial—$2.5 million in today’s dollars, an extraordinary amount at a time when the Great Depression was already being felt. (Surely, they were grateful because, in those pre-Social Security days, Westinghouse was among the first industrial magnates to establish a retirement pension system for employees and dependent family members.)

Some 15,000 people came to the ceremony dedicating this memorial, which was designed by architects Henry Hornbostel and Eric Fisher Wood in a modern style but many beaux arts influences. Originally, the pond was supposed to be filled by a natural stream, Phipps Run, but storms forced the pond to be retrofitted as an artificial water feature. Over time, the pond no longer held water.

The firm of Pashek + MTR was commissioned to bring the memorial closer to its original conception. The changes the firm introduced were meant to:

* restore a trail and overlook in the adjacent stream valley of Phipps Run;

* replace the random flagstone paving;

* reconfigure the pond’s mechanical systems;

* converted compacted lawn areas uphill of the pond into meadow rain gardens.

After years of fundraising and restoration, the memorial was rededicated three years ago this past October.

The story of Westinghouse and this memorial merits more details, which I’ll try to provide in the next week with another post or two.