Welcome
This obviously is a work in progress, but all links should work.
Some things look historical, but aren’t.
(If you came here seeking information on a specific person or statue, scroll down the sidebar on the left for a list of names.)
This Web site aims to be a slightly whimsical, cross-referenced catalog of New York’s historical statues, focusing more on the statue itself and less on the person depicted — after all, you can read about Abraham Lincoln anywhere — and ignoring other monuments outright.
Now, a historical statue, for our purposes, is any three-dimensional figure of a once-living person or animal, such as the statue of the philanthropist William Earle Dodge (pictured above, during a book reading) in Bryant Park. Memorials that are not sticking up in the air, such as a bas-relief plaque, are not included. Statues that are largely inaccessible to pedestrians, such as the figures representing historical systems of law that ring the appellate court building in Manhattan, are not included either. (Hey, it’s my Web site.) And, furthermore, I have ignored the 97 historical busts at the Hall of Fame of Great Americans at Bronx Community College, mostly because they have their own nifty online tour.
Who appreciates statues more than pigeons?
By my count, that leaves 154 in the five boroughs, the majority in Manhattan and Brooklyn. For a list of these (and of the ones I don’t count), click here.
Anyway. Welcome. Like I said, in the sidebars you can find links to the statues, listed by the historical figure (an asterisk denotes a bust rather than a full-body figure), the parks where they reside and the sculptors who made them. You also can find lots of other stuff: a list of recently added pages; a search engine; several themed pages, such as a list of which historical figures are immortalized the most; a contact form; and links to interesting related Web sites.
That is no way to treat a statue.
The first page to be completed was about the statue in Bryant Park of Benito Juarez, the first guy born in Mexico to be president of Mexico. My favorite page, not so much for its writing as for whom it’s about, is this.
