Politics and Memory: Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York

A rich history of Gilded Age partisan politics, aesthetics, and the creation of New York City’s Civil War monuments

In the decades following the Civil War, New York City built more monuments to the Union cause than any other city in the nation outside of Washington, DC. Ranging from simple standing soldiers to grand triumphal arches and temples, these monuments shaped commemorative aesthetics and iconography at the local and national levels. Unlike Confederate monuments, which were mostly ...