Shaw Memorial
Visit to Saint-Gaudens Home
Date: 07/12/2008
We visited the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. This is the Shaw Memorial, which commemorates Robert Gould Shaw, who led the 54th Mass. Regiment. Known as the 'Buffalo Soldiers,' they were the first African-American regiment raised in the North.
Adams Memorial
Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site
Date: 07/12/2008
This memorial to Marion Hooper Adams (died by suicide in 1885) is, at the requirement of her widower, an abstraction, not a representation of Mrs. Adams. What we found most notable is that it's deliberately androgynous: both a male and female model were used.
Noel
...looking over Diana
Date: 07/12/2008
Noel gets a close look at Diana, the huntress, in a way that would have appalled Saint-Gaudens. As a weather vane, she was designed to be seen from far below, with elongated limbs to overcome perspective
Admiral Farragut Monument
Date: 07/12/2008
This memorial to Civil War Admiral David G. Farragut (a copy, but sitting on the original pedestal) was commissioned for Madison Square Park in New York City. Farragut is best remembered for saying, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." 'Torpedoes' are mines, in modern parlance.
Sherman Bust
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Date: 07/12/2008
Note the astonishing verisimilitude in this bust of General William T. Sherman. The ranger told us Sherman came in for his sitting looking like a wreck. Saint-Gaudens invited him to tidy up for posterity -- and invitation he refused. So Saint-Gaudens presents him here exactly as he was in life.
