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Saw an image today that got me hot. First time seeing it. I was born & raised in DC. The symbolism of architecture and monument in the city becomes like bone to folks who grow up around it. You know it’s there, you feel it, it shapes you, but you don’t too often meditate on it.
Only after I’d gotten older and had left DC for NY, did I come to appreciate the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial. I walked past it one day when back home with my kids, and it struck me. It’s my favorite now.
Situated under the shadow of the Capitol, in Union Square, on the east edge of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, it’s the tallest equine statue in America - Grant, on high, astride his horse, at the ready and facing west...
...where, across the mall, past the Washington Monument, sits Lincoln, gazing in the direction of his general – the two imperfect men binding the center of the Nation’s Capitol together, by force of lasting will memorialized in bronze and marble.
The power & purpose of the Grant piece is self-evident. The full monument is tripartite: Grant on horseback (four lions below him guarding the flags of the Army and the United States), to his north, a life-size Cavalry group charges, to his south, an Artillery group.
Henry Merwin Shrady led the sculpting of the thing. A NYer, he reportedly taught himself his craft by observing animals at the Bronx Zoo then shaping small table-top models of them. He & his partner Edward Pearce Casey won the commission in 1902 & completed the work 20 yrs later.
At the muddy bottom of the Calvary scene, in breath-filled detail (as throughout the piece), is a fallen soldier in almost serene distress. Clutching his fallen horse, he's resigned to his fate. He’ll succumb imminently to driving hooves & the urgency of the battle. It's obvious.
The war is claiming the man’s body & soul.
Shrady is said to have used his own face as the model for this man’s.
Shrady died on April 12, 1922, two weeks before the memorial's dedication on the centennial of Grant's birthday. I’ve read he died of exhaustion.
Shrady is said to have used his own face as the model for this man’s.
Shrady died on April 12, 1922, two weeks before the memorial's dedication on the centennial of Grant's birthday. I’ve read he died of exhaustion.
So this a monument to Grant, to the preservation of America and also, quietly, a monument to a warrior artist. And on Jan 6, nearly 100 years after it was erected...
...a traitorous, racist buffoon climbed onto the Artillery side to desecrate this memorial, like no pigeon shit could, by raising a Confederate flag. The mf should be found and, at the least, made to clean every inch of the piece with a toothpick for his anti-American coonery.
Anyway, today is a new day. Keep the faith. And keep the fight.
