Coast Guard Memorial

The Coast Guard Memorial honors those from the Coast Guard who served their country during World War II. It depicts an interracial three-figure group in which two soldiers in fatigues bearing rifles support a wounded comrade in arms. The United States Coast Guard was established in 1915 when the United States Revenue Cutter Service and Life Saving Service were combined into one administrative entity, and functions formerly conducted by the Lighthouse Service, the Steamboat Inspection Service, and the Bureau of Navigation were later incorporated into its mission. Charged with broad seaboard duties such as coastal safety, environmental protection, the enforcement of navigation rules, and the interdiction of illegal freight, the Coast Guard was under the Department of the Treasury until 1967, is under the federal Department of Transportation during peacetime, and comes under the control of the U.S. Navy in times of war. It maintains an administrative facility at the Battery and a base on Staten Island. The sculpture was created by Norman Millet Thomas, a painter and combat veteran who studied at the American Academy in Rome and with Paul Manship at the National Academy of Design in New York City, and based the composition on a rescue he had witnessed at the Luzon beachhead in the Philippines. Using a sketch Thomas submitted, the Coast Guard commissioned the sculpture through contributions from thousands of servicemen and women. First proposed in 1945, Thomas’s original design was declined by the New York City Art Commission, but a revised design introducing the central Black figure was approved in 1954. The sculpture was unveiled on Memorial Day, May 30, 1955, with remarks by Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey and Admiral A. C. Richmond, and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses praised it as conceived in war and dedicated to actual heroism. In 2021, as part of improvements to the Battery, it was installed in a newly created triangular plaza landscaped with native grasses adjacent to the Coast Guard building.

New York, New York · United States