Art About Love of Country Rules the Headlines

Today I’m launching July 4 a few days early with tidbits about celebrations of America through art. Earlier this month, Brooklyn’s splendid Soldiers and Sailors Arch on Grand Army Plaza reopened after a two-year $8.9 million renovation sponsored by New York City’s Parks Department and the Prospect Park Alliance. The triumphal arch, echoing those in the Roman Forum, is on Grand Army Plaza by the entrance to Prospect Park. Completed in 1892, and crumbling for years, it’s Brooklyn’s memorial to Union soldiers and sailors who fought during the Civil War. It looks fantastic.

John Duncan, the architect for Grant’s Tomb in Manhattan, designed the monument, but the plaza comes from Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. It serves as a buffer between a confluence of busy streets and serene Prospect Park. Brooklyn was still its own city when the arch opened, and what a dynamo it was. It wanted and got the best. Frederick MacMonnies, who followed his mentor Saint Gaudens as America’s premier sculptor, designed three bronze groups, one each symbolizing the Army and the Navy and, on top of the arch, a four-horse chariot in which Columbia, America’s personification, rides in triumph.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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Today I’m launching July 4 a few days early with tidbits about celebrations of America through art. Earlier this month, Brooklyn’s splendid Soldiers and Sailors Arch on Grand Army Plaza reopened after a two-year $8.9 million renovation sponsored by New York City’s Parks Department and the Prospect Park Alliance. The triumphal arch, echoing those in the Roman Forum, is on Grand Army Plaza by the entrance to Prospect Park. Completed in 1892, and crumbling for years, it’s Brooklyn’s memorial to Union soldiers and sailors who fought during the Civil War. It looks fantastic.

John Duncan, the architect for Grant’s Tomb in Manhattan, designed the monument, but the plaza comes from Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. It serves as a buffer between a confluence of busy streets and serene Prospect Park. Brooklyn was still its own city when the arch opened, and what a dynamo it was. It wanted and got the best. Frederick MacMonnies, who followed his mentor Saint Gaudens as America’s premier sculptor, designed three bronze groups, one each symbolizing the Army and the Navy and, on top of the arch, a four-horse chariot in which Columbia, America’s personification, rides in triumph.