Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument (New York)

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The monument from New York City, circa 1908

From below

The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument commemorates Union Army soldiers and sailors who served in the American Civil War. It is located at 89th street and Riverside Drive in Riverside Park in the Upper West Side of New York City. It was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1902.

The white marble monument was designed after a public competition by architects Charles and Arthur Stoughton. The ornamental features were carved by Paul E. Duboy. The monument takes the form of a peripteral Corinthian temple with a high cylindrical cella, that carries a low conical roof like a lid. Its twelve Corinthian columns are incised with the names of the New York volunteer regiments and the battles in which they served as well as Union generals. It stands at the center of a complex sequence of balustraded formal paved terraces and stairs that rationalize the steep natural slopes to north and west. Its siting at a curve in Riverside Drive makes it visible from a distance, a desirable feature for a monument in the City Beautiful movement, of which this Beaux-Arts monument is a prime example.

Its distant forebear is the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, to which it has interposed an attic with sculptured eagles and a base with banded rustication.

The New York Landmark Commission designated the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument a landmark in 2001.^[1]