Artwork Details
- Title
- Eagles
- Artist
- Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870 – 1952)
- Year
- 1904; installed 1967
- Medium
- Stone, Tennessee marble
- Dimensions
- Height 5' ; width 6'
Artwork Description
Adolph Alexander Weinman was born in Carlsruhe, Germany, in 1870. When he was 10 years old, his widowed mother brought him to New York, where he later apprenticed with a carver of wood and ivory. In the evenings, he studied at Cooper Union and frequented the Art Students League. Weinman was interested in medallic as well as sculptural art and is known for designing the 1916 dime and half-dollar.
The architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White hired Weinman to design ornamental figures for the Pennsylvania Station Building in New York City (1904). Using Milford pink granite from Massachusetts, he carved 14 eagles for the roof, each weighing 5,500 pounds, and 8 smaller eagles of Knoxville marble. When the station was demolished in 1963, four of the large eagles were given to Association for Public Art (then known as the Fairmount Park Art Association). They were installed four years later on the Market Street Bridge.
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
Acquired by Association for Public Art (formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association); gift from the Pennsylvania Railroad
Owned by the City of Philadelphia