The Fate of Offensive Georgia Statue Hangs in the Balance

Copyright Peter Radunzel

What do you do with a memorial to someone you don’t want to memorialize anymore? If recent military history is any indication, you topple the monuments to the old ways as soon as possible. What happens when the revolution is one of the mind? What happens when the hearts and minds of a country change, rendering the ideals and values a memorial stands for obsolete? In the case of Thomas E. Watson, photographed here at the Georgia State Capitol, your statue gets moved.

Watson was a Georgia politician, first elected to the state legislature in 1882 at the tender age of 26. The young Watson proved to be an idealistic champion of reform, fighting unsuccessfully against the corruption rampant among railroad companies in the state. In 1890, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat. His crowning achievement during his time in Congress was authoring the bill that made Rural Free Delivery a reality. RFD created the system of roadside mailbox delivery from the U.S. Post Office still used today. prior to that time, residents of rural communities had to collect mail in the nearest town. Watson soon threw his allegiance to The Populist Party, a short-lived third party collection of reformers hostile to a national bank, railroads, and wealthy elites. In 1896, he was the Populist Party’s candidate for Vice-President, receiving 217,000 votes.

After his time in Congress, Watson began a lucrative career newspaper publisher. As his personal wealth grew, his political views began to shift. Gone were his agrarian and socialist sympathies. He was still the Populist Party standard-bearer, however, being nominated by the party for President in both 1900 and 1904. His views became increasingly anti-Catholic, even going so far as to call for the re-creation of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1913, Watson advocated the lynching of convicted Jewish-American factory superintended Leo Frank for the murder of a 13-year-old female factory worker named Mary Phagan. When prominent citizens of Marietta, Georgia did just that in 1915, Watson lauded the act in the pages of his newspaper.

Watson died in 1922 at the age of 66. Ten years later, a statue was dedicated to him near the entrance to the Georgia State Capitol. According to news reports of the time, thousands were on hand to see the unveiling of the statue. The likeness stood there, fist defiantly raised, for 83-years. The statue was moved in November 2013 after a prolonged effort on the part of activists to have the statue taken down. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R), said the move was done for safety reasons while repairs were being made to the steps of the Capitol. Removal of the statue was done when state offices were closed as part of the state’s late observance of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s birthday.

The odyssey of Watson’s statue does not seem to be quite over, though. The statue was moved across the street from the Capitol to Talmadge Plaza Park. The park’s prominent location in downtown Atlanta has left some residents and activists calling for the statue to be boxed or destroyed outright. Where Watson will end up is anybody’s guess.

The Perils of Primavera

Copyright Ben Rimmer

Florence was the first city of the Renaissance. It was from the heart of that city that the flowering of arts and literature took shape and spread throughout Europe. It is the city where Leonard da Vinci and Michelangelo did some of their best work. It is no surprise, then, that art is built into the very foundations of the city. Such is the case with the Ponte Santa Trinita and the four statues of the seasons that have watched over it since 1608. One of these statues, pictured above in a photo by Ben Rimmer, was Primavera, or Spring by Pietro Francavilla. Summer and Autumn were created by Giovanni Caccini and Winter by Taddeo Landini. The sculptures have lived a perilous existence, due in part to the location of the Ponte Santa Trinita itself.

The Ponte Santa Trinita, Italian for “Holy Trinity Bridge,” spans the Arno river and was built in 1567. The bridge is itself is a work of art, involving three flattened ellipses and making it the oldest elliptical bridge in the world. The four statues were commissioned to celebrate the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo II de’ Medici’s wedding to Maria Magdalena of Austria. World War II proved almost lethal to the four statues. In August 1944, Allied forces pressed deeper into Italy. As the Germany army retreated, four of the five bridges spanning the Arno were destroyed. Only the Ponte Vecchio was spared. Art critic Emilio Lavagnini said the destruction of Ponte Santa Trinita was the most important piece of architecture destroyed by the war in Italy.

Restoring the bridge and the damaged statues took years after the close of the war in 1945. Piece after piece of the bridge and statues were dredged from the river. Architect Riccardo Gizdulich studied had handmade chisels produced to construct the bridge in much the same way Bartolomeo Ammanati had constructed it in 1569. Stone from the same quarry was used to piece the bridge together. Art historian Bernard Berenson raised money abroad for the construction, though the bulk of the project was paid for by the Italian government. Primavera was headless for many years. It was rumored that an American GI had stolen it. It was not until 1961 that her head was found in the Arno and put back in its rightful place. Let’s hope she keeps it for at least another 400 years.

The Myth of Abner Doubleday and Baseball

Copyright Scott Nelson

Baseball season is in full swing here in the United States, despite the chilly weather we’re still seeing in the northeast.  This week, we celebrate that great American tradition by paying homage to Abner Doubleday.  For many years, Abner Doubleday was considered the inventor of baseball.  That story is pure legend.  The truth of his life, however, is much more interesting.

Doubleday eventually found himself on administrative duty in Washington.  He was a staunch supporter of Abraham Lincoln and rode with him on the train to Gettysburg, where Lincoln delivered The Gettysburg Address, one of the key speeches in American history.  After the war, Doubleday commanded troops in Texas and San Francisco, where he eventually became president of the American Theosophical Society, whose members included Thomas Edison.  He spent much time writing, eventually penning two major works on the Civil War.

Doubleday’s connection to baseball  comes from a 1907 report claiming Doubleday invented the sport in a cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York in 1839.  In the years leading up to the report, a vicious debate raged in the United States on the origins of baseball.  Had baseball been invented in the United States or was it a variation on a British game called rounders?  National League president Abraham G. Mills and Chicago Cubs president Albert Spalding certainly didn’t want to believe the game was British.  Sportswriter Henry Chadwick, a native of Britain, believed the game had indeed evolved from rounders.  He outlined similarities between the two games in a 1903 article.  A commission was formed to research the truth–a committee of men handpicked by Spalding.

Enter Abner Graves, an engineer told the Akron Beacon Journal in 1905 that Doubleday had invented the game.  Graves said he saw Doubleday diagram the game of a baseball field.  Spalding wrote to Graves asking for proof.  Graves told Spalding that no copies of the diagram survived and that almost all of the players were dead.  He did, however, send Spalding a diagram he claimed looked just like the one Doubelday had drawn up.  That was enough for Spalding, the 1907 report by Mills gave Doubleday–and America–credit for inventing the game.

There are some problems with that version of history.  Doubleday wasn’t in Cooperstown at all during 1839.  He was a cadet at West Point–a first year cadet, to be exact, one who would have rarely been given leave.  Doubleday left a prodigious body of written work, with only one mention of baseball–in 1871.  Graves, if he did see the diagram, would have been five in 1839.  Graves was also committed to an insane asylum as an old man.  Mills’ bias was obvious, too.  Remember the Theosophical Society?  Mills donated money to the organization.

Despite evidence to the contrary, the myth is resoundingly resilient.  The National Baseball Hall of Fame was built in Cooperstown, New York in 1939, site of Doubleday’s mythical first game.  In 2010, Tim Arango of the New York Times revealed that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig had written a letter, satating: “I really believe that Abner Doubleday is the ‘Father of Baseball’.”  History is forgotten, but myth dies hard…especially when there is money to be made.

This week’s statue was photographed by Abner Doubleday’s 5th great-grand nephew, Scott Nelson.  The statue stands on Reynolds Avenue.  The statue stands nine feet tall on an eleven foot tall granite base.  The sculptor was John Massey Rhind.  It was dedicated on September 25, 1917 by the State of New York.

Grover Cleveland at Buffalo, New York City Hall

Copyright Brady Carlson

American history classes were once rife with presidential errata.  In my school days, presidential trivia was the bedrock of learning about the American experience.  Some of the first bits of knowledge generations of American school children learned concerned presidents.  These bits and pieces of presidential lives loom large in American history: Washington’s cherry tree, Lincoln’s fence rail, and Roosevelt’s big stick are all touchstones for students of American history.

In the course of human affairs, though, some presidents get lost in the shuffle.  One of the eras that seems to burst with forgettable presidents is the late 19th Century.  We at Monumental Photography refer to these men as The Muttonchop Presidents.  The Muttonchop Era began March 4, 1877 with the inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes and ended March 4, 1897 with the inaugural of the clean-shaven William McKinley.  In between, the U.S. was led by Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and Grover Cleveland (again).  Arthur was the only one to have true muttonchops, but all men represent a period when facial hair was the norm for the U.S. President.  The prior two presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, were the first two presidents to wear beards.  They, however, are not include on the list of forgettable presidents–freeing millions of humans from bondage and winning the American Civil War tends to make a man stand out in a crowd.  The Muttonchop Presidents were remarkable men in their own right, however, even if they do get lost in a sea of Gilded Age grooming habits.

This week, we look at Grover Cleveland in front of City Hall in Buffalo, New York, courtesy of photographer Brady Carlson.  Cleveland holds the distinction of being the only U.S. President to be elected to two non-consecutive terms, which makes him both the 22nd and 24th President of the United States.  Cleveland was elected president in 1884 and 1892.  In between those elections, he was defeated by Rutherford B. Hayes.  Opponents of the Electoral College take note: despite losing the electoral vote, Cleveland received 48.6 percent of all votes, while Harrison had just 47.8.  So, the winner was the loser–or the loser was the winner, depending on your point of view.  It was the third time in U.S. history that had happened.  It would not happen again until 2000, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore.

Cleveland was a shrewd politician and a conservative icon in the days before Fox News.  he was pro-business, fiscally conservative, and a champion of political reform.  He took on–and defeated–the boss politics and patronage systems running rampant both in his home state of New York and nationally as chief executive.  His crusade for reform as Mayor of Buffalo and, later, as Governor of New York was so popular that an entire wing of the Republican Party threw their support to Cleveland in the 1884 election.  This group was given one of the greatest nicknames in U.S. political history, the Mugwumps.

The statue pictured was one of two by sculptor Bryant Baker at the dedication of Buffalo’s new City Hall in 1932.  The other statue is of Buffalo native and forgettable 13th President Millard Fillmore.  Cleveland’s statue is a bronze statue on an engraved polished granite base.  On the rear of the base is inscribed: “I have tried so hard to do right.”

A guy named Grover with great facial hair whose followers were called Mugwumps–it sounds like the makings of a great alt-country act.  This guy should have much more cred with the hipsters.  Long live the Muttonchop Presidents!