Frederick W. MacMonnies' statue of General Henry Warner Slocum, located in Grand Army Plaza at the top of a small hill at Plaza Street East, was unveiled on Memorial Day, 1905. The bronze monument depicts the Civil War hero atop his horse with a raised saber in his right hand. MacMonnies worked with Stanford Whtie on the piece, which was originally located on Eastern Parkway at Bedford Avenue, and moved to its present location in the late 1920s. Architect White’s pedestal is adorned with a relief eagle on front and four medallions, two on each side. President Theodore Roosevelt was the keynote speaker at the monument’s unveiling.
Henry Warner Slocum (1827–1894) was born in Delphi, New York in 1827. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he was subsequently trained as a lawyer and admitted to the Bar in 1858. In 1859 he became a member of the New York State Assembly and served in 1860 as treasurer of Onondaga County in upstate New York. When the Civil War began, Slocum volunteered but was severely wounded at the battle of Bull Run (1861); Slocum returned to action later that year, rising to the rank of General. He commanded the extreme right line of the Union Army at Gettysburg and was one of the first Union soldiers to enter Atlanta in September 1864. After the war, Slocum returned to upstate New York and was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State of New York, but lost the election. In 1866 he moved to Brooklyn and was elected to U.S. Congress in 1868 and 1870. Slocum served as Commissioner of Public Works in Brooklyn before returning to Congress in 1882.
Frederick MacMonnies (1863–1937) is well represented in the City’s parks, with more than a dozen pieces exhibited. His contributions are particularly noticeable in Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park. MacMonnies’s
Horse Tamers (1899), the
Army and
Navy groups (1901 and 1902) and
www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/479428098 and Four Eagles (1898), and the bronze depiction of
James S.T. Stranhan (1891), the father of Prospect Park, are major features of the adjoining sites. He worked with architect Stanford White on all of these pieces, and collaborated with him on
Nathan Hale (1890) as well, which can be seen in Manhattan’s City Hall Park. Civic Virtue (1922), perhaps MacMonnies’s most controversial work, is located beside Queens Borough Hall. Depicting a scantily clad man standing on two nymphs, Civic Virtue stood in front of City Hall until Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had it banished to Queens because he felt it too obscene.
