Visitors to the Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn are treated to a special spectacle. (Or not.)
For the summer, city officials have covered the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch with a massive white mantle while it undergoes much-needed repairs. THE $9 million restoration of the Arc de Triomphe and the Bailey Fountain began in early May, but it was not until this month that the historic landmark was hidden from public view. Funded by former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, the project is led by Prospect Park Alliance, a private nonprofit organization that oversees day-to-day park operations, in partnership with New York City.
Perched on the north corner of the park, at the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Eastern Parkway, Grand Army Plaza is more than a busy roundabout, hosting countless community gatherings, protestsand events, including the weekly year-round Farmer’s Market.
Since the mid-1990s, when the arch was last restored, the designated landmark has deteriorated badly, plagued by invasive plants and degrading infrastructure. The Brooklyn site reorganization project has been pushed back due to the “complexity of the project” and the slowdown of the pandemic, a representative from Prospect Park Alliance said. Hyperallergic; now the restoration is moving forward.
The project makes several improvements to the oval-shaped plaza, including renovating the brick and stone exterior of the arch, repairing the interior stairs of the monument leading to the observation deck, and replacing the roof of the arch and exterior light fixtures.
Additionally, the plaza’s existing chain-link fence will be replaced with new steel barriers, and broken and uneven walkways leading to the historic Bailey Fountain and the John F. Kennedy Memorial will be repaired to improve pedestrian accessibility. The project will also take care of the grassy embankments framing the plaza, as the City plans to remove invasive plants and unhealthy trees and repopulate the landscape with fresh native flora.
Prior to the existence of the roundabout, the area was originally the site of the Battle of Long Island (or the Battle of Brooklyn) in the Revolutionary War, the first major battle after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. When Prospect Park was built in 1867, park designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the elliptical plaza as an official entrance to the park. The plaza became the location of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in 1892. Designed by John H. Duncan, the granite monument was erected to honor those who served and fought in the Union Army during the civil war.
The Great Arch is decorated with bronze statuary groupings designed by Frederick MacMonnies that depict the goddess Columbia, a female personification of America riding a horse-drawn chariot, and soldiers and sailors of the Union Army who fought in the Civil War. In the statuary group on the right, a black soldier is depicted holding a pistol, crouching in front of the white soldiers standing behind him.
The black soldier’s kneeling pose has been the subject of criticism and debate, explained Professor Kirk Savage of the University of Pittsburgh, who said Hyperallergic that the image derives from the emblems of 19th century abolitionist white saviors who “completely lacked any notion of black agency or resistance”. As a professor of art history and architecture, Savage focuses his research on Civil War monuments and currently serves on the board of directors of Monument Lab, a Philadelphia nonprofit organization aimed specifically at the reform of past, present and future public monuments.
Savage explained that although the figure is “partially stuck in the passive pose of a kneeling figure”, the inclusion of the bronze soldier was “a groundbreaking image” for its time, as it exemplified “a certain agency or resistance” which was otherwise absent. in other Civil War monuments influenced by abolitionists at the time. Savage noted the sculptor’s specific decision to put a gun in the soldier’s hand, as well as having the soldier’s gaze looking outward in the same direction as the barrel at his side, unlike other memorials of the time such as that of Thomas Ball”Emancipation Group(1873) which showed black individuals looking down in a submissive pose.
New York City had its own problematic history during the Civil War. Despite being a Union state, the city inflicted its own violence on its black residents, such as the Draft Riots of 1863 when angry white residents committed five days of “acts of terror” against the the city’s black population on a massive scale, Savage explained.
“To put a black figure in this monument was something that I thought was surprising,” Savage said. “But there’s probably still room for a counter-image to [the arch] which better represents the long history of black resistance.
Multimedia artist Nicole Awai explained to Hyperallergic how she always saw the black soldier in the monument as her “guide”, helping to inspire her multimedia installation”Persistent Liquid Earth Resistance(2018) at the BRIC Art Center in Downtown Brooklyn. The image of the soldier also prompted Awai to create “Spirit of Persistence of Resistance of the Liquid Land” (2018) in response to Confederate’s withdrawal the monuments across the country, commemorating the fatal 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., which resulted in the murder of civil rights activist Heather Heyer.
“He’s never a victim. To me, he was really the alchemist, the person who transforms or creates through a seemingly magical process, who has the power to transform things for the better,” Awai said.
Construction of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch is scheduled to be completed this fall. The arch and the oval-shaped plaza will reopen to pedestrians by spring 2024.
