Artwork Details
- Title
- Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Memorial
- Artist
- Hermon Atkins MacNeil (1866 – 1947)
- Year
- 1921; installed 1927; relocated 1954–1955
- Medium
- Two pylons, Tennessee marble, on granite bases
- Dimensions
- Each pylon: height 40′; width 13'3"; depth 10'' (base height 11"; width 10'6"; depth 10'9")
Artwork Description
Even while the nation was engaged in World War I, Philadelphia decided to commemorate the Civil War. The city appropriated funds for a memorial, and Hermon Atkins MacNeil was selected for the commission.
MacNeil was born in Massachusetts and worked in Paris. Returning to the United States, he was among the first American artists to look to his native terrain for sculptural subjects, particularly the American Indian. He traveled in the Southwest and won numerous awards for his renderings of Native Americans.
These two pylons – one depicting sailors, the other soldiers – were intended to stand as gates to the “Parkway Gardens.” They were moved to accommodate the construction of the Vine Street Expressway, but still mark the entry to the park from the city. One of the inscriptions reads: “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.”
Content on this page was adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, 1992). Bach was the longtime Executive Director of the Association for Public Art, working with the organization from 1980 to 2022.
Artwork Credits
Commissioned and owned by the City of Philadelphia
Artwork Media
Museum Without Walls
Voices:
ALAN GREENBERGER is an architect and Fellow at the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University. He is a Trustee of the Association for Public Art, former Chair of the Philadelphia Art Commission, and former Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development and former Commerce Director.
ALLEN C. GUELZO is the Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the former Director of the Civil War Era Studies Program at Gettysburg College.
SARAH MCENEANEY is a painter in Philadelphia who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Producer: Jonathan Mitchell