New York City War Memorials

Korean War Memorial
Battery Park
http://www.pbase.com/image/29518835.jpg

Merchant Mariners’ Memorial
Battery Park
http://www.pbase.com/image/29518244.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/29557820.jpg

East Coast Memorial
WW II Battle of the Atlantic
Battery Park
http://www.pbase.com/image/21552196.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/29519206.jpg

Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument
Riverside Park
http://www.pbase.com/image/29557589.jpg

And a concert
http://www.pbase.com/image/29557679.jpg

Vietnam War Memorial Plaza
http://www.pbase.com/image/29558005.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/29558122.jpg

Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument
Fort Greene Park
http://www.pbase.com/image/29557308.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/29557513.jpg

Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch
Brooklyn Grand Army Plaza
http://www.pbase.com/image/19268255.jpg

...and many others.

Awesome thread, I havent seen all of these around. Gotta check em' out.

Fantastic.

The Merchant Mariners' Memorial is mesmerizing, especially when the tide comes up to his head - very creepy.

Wow :shock: thanks for the pictures and info...now I have something to look forward to visit.

Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument
Riverside Park
http://www.pbase.com/image/29557589.jpg

General Grant National Memorial
Riverside Park
http://www.wirednewyork.com/images/general_grant.jpg

At one time I used to think that the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument was the General Grant National Memorial and I will tell people who visit the city. :oops:

I was there one day at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument and someone told me that was Grant's tomb and since then I was confuse until I got closer one day and read what the info on the monument said. Then I went to the internet and found the answer to the confusion. :wink:

It's easy to confuse the two, especially from the highway.

The sidewalk along Riverside Drive (park side) just south of Soldiers and Sailors is being repaired. Hopefully, the memorial plaza is next - it is a mess.

Bronx War Memorials

Renovation of Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial Will Light Up Fort Greene Park

BY DANIELA GERSON - Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 25, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/14366

In Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, lines form early at the tennis courts, dog owners let their pets roam free, and students from gym classes at the nearby Brooklyn Tech high school dutifully run their laps each morning. All that activity takes place atop the remains of more than 11,000 American patriots.

A crypt in the park is the final resting place of prisoners of war who perished at sea during the Revolutionary War. Soon, a glowing light visible from as far away as Lower Manhattan will bring new attention to this part of the nation's past.

As part of a $3 million reconstruction project, the park's Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial will be restored to its prior glory. The aging 147-foot granite obelisk, towering over the ginkgo trees that line the park's central slope, will be illuminated for the first time in 60 years. A new spiral staircase will be built inside the memorial, and some of the bronze eagles - removed from the base in the late 1970s after one was stolen - will be replaced.

Among the city's most remarkable monuments, the Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial was designed at different times by the two most important landscape-architecture firms in the city's history: Olmsted, Vaux & Co. and McKim, Mead, and White.

The memorial pays tribute to the soldiers and civilians who perished in Wallabout Bay after the English demanded that Americans surrender to the crown. Those who refused were taken as prisoners of war and held captive on ships where they died at a rate of 10 to 12 a day, according to John Krawchuk, who is heading the reconstruction project for the city's Department of Parks and Recreation.

Long after the war ended, the bones of the dead, who had been buried in shallow graves along the East River, washed up on the shores of Brooklyn. Residents collected them and eventually created an initial memorial in the early 19th century at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for those who perished aboard the prison ships.

In the 1840s, a celebrated Brooklyn resident, the editor and poet Walt Whitman, spearheaded the construction of Fort Greene Park. In 1867, the designers of Central and Prospect parks, Olmsted, Vaux & Company, redesigned Fort Greene Park, and in a stone wall, halfway up the stairs that now face the Fort Greene housing projects, a crypt for the remains of the prison ship victims was installed.

In the first decade of the 20th century, McKim, Mead, and White, the firm that also designed Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn and parts of Columbia University, was commissioned to create an obelisk in tribute. That was to be the last design for the firm, which was considered the premier architecture company at the time. Stanford White, after a day of working on the monument, was slain in Manhattan by a lover's husband. The plans went ahead nonetheless and, in 1908, President Taft traveled to Fort Greene for an official ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The obelisk towered over Brooklyn. Until the 1930s, visitors could take elevator rides up to the top to get impressive views of Manhattan. In the ensuing years, however, the park slowly decayed and, by the 1970s, graffiti covered much of the base of the monument and vandalism was taking its toll.

"When it was built, 40,000 people came to the opening ceremony," a former president of the Society of Old Brooklynites, Frank Spinner, said. Whitman was a member of the society. Now, Mr. Spinner said, his group is lucky to get 200 at its annual rededication of the site. "It should be getting much more attention because these people died horribly, and the monument is the only thing that remembers them," he said.

In 1986, the monument and the park were featured prominently in the independent feature film "She's Gotta Have It" by director Spike Lee, who was then a resident of Fort Greene.

Since the 1990s, Fort Greene has seen a real estate boom, and various organizations have focused on improving the park. The Fort Greene Park Conservancy contributed $300,000 for the conservation of the bronze brazier atop the obelisk through a state grant.

Veterans groups, too, have been actively lobbying for restoration of the monument and the eagles that were said either to be in storage in Queens or used as interior decorating for a city official.

The Parks Department expects to begin work on the monument in the fall and the project should take 18 months, Mr. Krawchuk said at a meeting Monday night of the Fort Greene Association.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZippyTheChimp

Korean War Memorial

Merchant Mariners’ Memorial

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You would think they could at least spray the bird fecies off the statue every once and awhile..the guys heads were white when I was down there the other week...

Great post! Love the memorials...