New York War Memorials to Visit for Veterans Day
A Guide to Tour WWI Sites in the Region
Veterans Day is a time to remember those who served in uniform, and that’s something New York knows all about. The Empire State is brimming with historic possibilities around practically every corner. Whether you’re looking for a statute or an outing to visit a memorial, the region offers endless options to make your Veterans Day memorable. To help you plan the perfect day, we’ve compiled a list of historic sites to visit for Veterans Day in New York that will leave you and your family feeling a deeper connection to those who fought for our freedom and liberty. These are drawn from WWI New York: A Guide to the City’s Enduring Ties to the Great War (Globe Pequot Press), written by U.S. Marine Corps veteran Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, who leads the walking tour World War I New York: Monuments, Memorials & Remembrance.
THE BRONX: STUNNING MEMORIAL ON MOSULU PARKWAY
Irish-American sculptor Jerome Connor created a striking Doughboy sculpture partially based on an ancient Roman piece, Dying Gaul. The central figure, a bareheaded Doughboy standing over a wounded comrade, forms the apex of a pyramid. A characteristic of Beaux Arts style is combining academic poses in a stable pyramid. Connor poses his Doughboy clutching a rifle, fixed bayonet at the ready, with his head cocked to confront an unseen enemy as he stands guard over his friend. Neither of the two men have steel helmets on. An American bald eagle with outstretched wings is at their side. Cast in bronze with a pedestal of granite, the figures are seven feet high on a base more than six feet above the ground designed by architect Arthur George Waldreaon. Located in the Norwood section on Mosulu Parkway at Marion Avenue, it was dedicated on Armistice Day, November 11, 1925. The sculpture was called “Sacrifice and Defense” and was completed in less than a year, financed by local contributions.
BROOKLYN: POIGNANT MEMORIAL IN A PLAYGROUND
In 1922 Charles Keck was gaining wide acclaim as the nation’s premier World War I memorial sculptor when he created this bronze piece in his Greenwich Village studio at 40 West Tenth Street. Keck’s model was May Dowd, as an allegorical Liberty. She stands before an altar placing a palm, symbol of peace. A bayonet and helmet rest against the laurel in the back of the figure’s niche are symbolic of the Army, while the chain and anchor at her feet represent the Navy. The figure is more than seven feet high inside an eleven-foot-high granite stele. It contains a bronze plaque with the names of the forty-seven men from the local draft board district who died in the war. It was unveiled on the fourth anniversary of the war’s end, November 11, 1922, in a garden at Public School 130, where some of the war dead had been classmates. It was trucked to its current location in 1944 to Greenwood Playground, Greenwood Avenue and East Fifth Street, due to road work.
MANHATTAN: THE HERO MAYOR MEMORIAL
Alexander Hamilton and George Washington have the most memorials in the city. Coming in third place is John Purroy Mitchel, the “boy mayor” of New York. The Bronx-born Mitchel acted as mayor in 1910 while Mayor William Gaynor recuperated from a bullet wound. He was 34 years old when he was elected mayor in 1914 as a reform candidate to fight Tammany Hall corruption. Before America entered the war, Mitchel had to contend with anti-German sentiment in the city’s large immigrant neighborhoods and was forced to ban the public display of foreign flags. In 1917 he ran for re-election, but Mitchel’s outspoken support of the Allies cost him votes against Tammany’s “Red Mike” Hylan, who crushed him. His term in office ended December 31, 1917, whereupon he accepted an Army commission as a major and went to flight training at Gerstner Field in Lake Charles, Louisiana. On July 6, 1918, while making his last test flight, Mitchel fell out of the open cockpit at 500 feet and was killed. He was given a hero’s funeral and his remains interred in Woodlawn Cemetery. Memorials were quickly proposed but took ten years to complete. In Central Park, Mitchel’s 1928 memorial can be found at Fifth Avenue and East Ninetieth Street. The bust and inscriptions are gilded and flanked by decorative stonework and steps that replaced a dirt pathway. It is built into the base of the stairway leading to the Jacqueline Kennedy Reservoir.
QUEENS: THE NATIONAL CEMETERY ON THE BORDER
Cypress Hills National Cemetery is New York City’s only national cemetery. It was created by President Lincoln in 1862 as one of the first ten federal burial grounds for veterans. It is older than Arlington National Cemetery and has been closed to new internments since 1954. It is the final resting place for more than 18,000 veterans and dependents, but it has numerous graves that were moved here from other posts, including the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, Fort Jay on Governors Island, and other small Army posts in the region. It has many World War I gravesites. Cypress Hills National Cemetery is located in two places: 625 Jamaica Avenue, the main burial ground. A quarter mile away inside the private Cypress Hills Cemetery at 833 Jamaica Avenue is the “Union Grounds” that contains Civil War veterans. The majority of the Great War graves are in 625 Jamaica Avenue. It is open seven days a week, and closes at 4:00 p.m.
STATEN ISLAND: NOT-TO-MISS BRONZE
An impressive bas-relief bronze tablet on the wall of Staten Island Borough Hall was dedicated in 1920 to the approximately one hundred-fifty men of the island who died in the war. Scores were victims of the influenza pandemic of 1918. A large proportion served in the U.S. Navy. Two were from New Brighton: Seaman Louis Achilles was lost at sea when the USS Herman Frasch collided with another ship, and Seaman Franklin Eden perished aboard the tug USS Cherokee, lost in a gale. The tablet depicts Columbia holding an American flag in her arms; ships can be seen in the background. Sculptor Albert Weinert was born and educated in Leipzig and launched his career in 1894 in Washington, D.C. He was chief modeler of the U.S. Library of Congress, creating animals, figures, and decorative details.
LONG ISLAND: GRANITE IN GARDEN CITY
Garden City is 25 miles east of Times Square and was the location of a temporary tent camp the Army erected in August 1917. It was located in the southeast part of Garden City, bounded on the west by Clinton Road, on the north by the Long Island Motor Parkway, on the south by Hempstead Village, and on the east by the new airfield later named Mitchel Field. Among the soldiers who trained here were twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant F. Scott Fitzgerald, who didn’t go overseas, and thirty-three-year-old Lieutenant Harry S. Truman, who shipped to France with the 129th Field Artillery. It was named in honor of Major General Albert L. Mills, a New York native and Medal of Honor winner for bravery at the Battle of San Juan Hill. During the summer and fall of 1917 the Forty-Second Infantry, drawn from the city, and the Forty-First Infantry, composed of western states recruits, embarked for France from here. Camp Mills was used as a demobilization point and then dismantled. Today there is a handsome granite marker at the intersection of Clinton Road and Commercial Avenue.