George Washington Statue

George Washington, born on February 22, 1732, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, rose from private education and work as a land surveyor to service in the militia and as an officer in the French and Indian Wars from 1755-1758. After reaching the rank of colonel, marrying Martha Dandridge, and returning to Mount Vernon, he reentered public life as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and the First and Second Continental Congresses. With the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, whose survival and success under his leadership led to the British evacuation and defeat in 1783. Dissatisfied with the provisional government after retiring again to Mount Vernon, he resumed public service, presided over the federal constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and was unanimously chosen as the first president of the United States, inaugurated at Federal Hall in New York City on April 30, 1789. Reelected to a second term in 793, he declined a third term and retired from political life in 1797, later coming to be regarded as instrumental in winning the American Revolution and establishing the new nation. A bronze equestrian portrait of Washington, the oldest sculpture in the New York City Parks collection, was modeled by Henry Kirke Brown and dedicated in 1865. Interest in erecting a monument to Washington in New York led a citizens' committee in 1851 to approach Horatio Greenough while also inviting Brown to submit a design; Greenough's death in 1852 ended any prospect of collaboration. Brown, assisted extensively by John Quincy Adams Ward in a specially equipped Brooklyn studio, spent 18 months modeling horse and rider, depicting Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783, when Washington reclaimed the city from the British. Cast at the Ames foundry in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and installed on June 5, 1856, on a granite base designed by Richard Upjohn, the work drew thousands of spectators and was formally conveyed to the custody of the City of New York on July 4. Originally standing in a fenced enclosure in the middle of the street at the southeast corner of the square, it was moved during the park's 1929-30 redesign to its present central position in the south plaza, aligned with Brown's sculpture of Abraham Lincoln. Conserved in 1989, 2001, 2004, and 2006, the sculpture also became a focus of collective grieving, vigil, and public expression after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, reaffirming its symbolic power in New York City.

New York, New York · United States