Trinity Church Wall Street, Alexander & Eliza Hamilton, and Norges Bank Investment Management

On Broadway in Lower Manhattan, near the intersection with the storied Wall Street, stands the church and graveyard of Trinity Church Wall Street. Looking at the property means you’re peering deep into the history of New York and the early days of the Republic — and into a modern-day real estate story involving Norwegians.

First, the church building.

The current church is the third one on the site, completed in 1846, so it isn’t the building that George Washington and especially Alexander Hamilton would have known. The second building was completed in 1790 to replace the original, which burned down in the Fire of 1776.

Richard Upjohn designed the current Gothic Revival structure as one of the first in a very long list of churches that he did. For a good many years, it was the tallest building in New York, or in the United States for that matter, which is a little hard to imagine in its current setting among taller buildings.

Being Holy Week, the church was fairly busy, though no service was going on when I visited.
Busy inside, but the real crowd was outside, in the graveyard.
A school group happened to be wandering through when I arrived. They might have come for the history of the entire place, but who had they really come to see?

Alexander Hamilton, of course.
I have to admit that I either didn’t know, or had forgotten, that he is buried at Trinity. In a way, that was a good thing, since it was a nice surprise.

Note the enormous number of pennies and other coins at the base of his stone. Seemed like even more than I saw at Benjamin Franklin’s grave, who had the benefit of being associated with “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

Eliza Hamilton, who outlived Alexander by more than 50 years and is buried next to him, collected her share of pennies, too.
That’s what you get for being the subject of a very popular musical in our time. Even I’ve heard some of the songs. Ann plays them in the car. They’re interesting. I’m all for musicals about major historical figures, but I’m not going to pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket.

The Hamiltons weren’t the only famed permanent residents of the graveyard. There’s steamboat popularizer Robert Fulton, who has a memorial fittingly erected by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Here’s Capt. James “Don’t Give Up the Ship” Lawrence, hero of the War of 1812. His memorial’s looking a little green these days.
Nice detail on one side.

There are also plenty of memorials for regular 18th- and 19th-century folks. I’m glad to say they were getting some attention.

There are stones the likes of which aren’t made any more.

Or on which time has taken its toll.
About those Norwegians. Trinity Church Wall Street, which is part of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, is known for is being one of the wealthiest parishes in the nation. In 1705, Queen Anne granted the church 215 acres on the island of Manhattan. It still holds 14 of those acres, which these days are home to millions of square feet of commercial property. That kind of acreage would make anyone very rich indeed.

Recently —  in 2015 — the church monetized 11 of its office buildings by striking a deal with Norges Bank Investment Management, which oversees Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (a lot of North Sea oil money, I reckon). It’s no secret. I quote from the press release the church published:

“Norges Bank Investment Management will acquire its 44 percent share in a 75-year ownership interest for 1.56 billion dollars, valuing the properties at 3.55 billion dollars. The assets will be unencumbered by debt at closing.”

Unencumbered by debt. The sweetest words you can write about real estate.

“The properties are about 94 percent leased and total over 4.9 million square feet. They are all located in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Midtown South in Manhattan… The buildings were originally built in the early 1900s to house printing presses, but have been redeveloped by Trinity Church to attract a mix of creative office tenants.”

At the Tip of Manhattan

“Charging Bull,” a 7,100-pound bronze at Broadway and Whitehall St. in Downtown Manhattan, seems even more popular than the statue of Rocky Balboa in Philadelphia, which certainly has its fans. My evidence is only anecdotal, judging by the number of people I saw around each, trying to take a picture. Rocky had a short line of people waiting to take their picture with him (in 2016, some 40 years after the movie came out).

But the Bull draws a crowd. In front of it:
Along with those eager to shoot its backside:
I was in New York City all of last week, where I met many of the editors of the company I now work for, plus writers and other staff, at an office in Downtown (Lower) Manhattan. Also during the trip, I spent time with a few old friends and their spouses, and my youngest nephew and his girlfriend. I even had a little time to walk around town, especially Downtown, which I enjoyed despite chilly air and some drizzle.

One of my walks took me to “Charging Bull,” which had its start as one of the heaviest works of guerilla art ever made, by Arturo Di Modica in the late 1980s. Now it’s a fixture on the tourist circuit, located almost as far south as you can go on the island, though not quite.

As is “Fearless Girl,” a much newer installation by Kristen Visbal, dating only from last year, and which was positioned to face the bull as an ad for an exchange-traded fund. I watched as one person after another posed with “Girl.”

Apparently Di Modica doesn’t like his work being upstaged by a little girl, but I can’t say that I much care. What’s interesting to me is their power as tourist magnets. Not many statues have that.

The statues are adjacent to a nice little park that has the distinction of being the first public park in New York, Bowling Green.
Note the fence. It rates a plaque, which says that the park was “leased in 1733 for use as a bowling green at a rental of one peppercorn a year. Patriots, who in 1776 destroyed an equestrian statue of George III which stood here, are said to have removed the crowns which capped the fence post, but the fence itself remains.”

The Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House rises over the park, roughly where Fort Amsterdam stood long ago.
The present structure dates from the early 1900s and was designed by Cass Gilbert, who’s best known for the Woolworth Building further uptown. These days, the building is home to a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian, which is part of the Smithsonian, as well as the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Off to each side of the building, allegorical figures stand above; tourists loll below.
Across State Street from the building, in Battery Park, is a curious flagpole. Officially it’s the Netherland Monument. This is the base.

According to NYC Parks: “This monumental flagstaff commemorates the Dutch establishment of New Amsterdam and the seventeenth century European settlement which launched the modern metropolis of New York City. Designed by H.A.van den Eijnde (1869-1939), a sculptor from Haarlem in the Netherlands, the monument was dedicated in 1926 to mark the tercentenary of Dutch settlement, and the purchase of the island of Manhattan from Native Americans.”

How many people crowd around the bronze bull? Dozens at a time. Around the Dutch flagpole? None. Fitting, I guess. Bulls used to get their own cults. Flagpoles, not so much.

The Dutch flag wasn’t flying on the pole.

But at least I saw New York City flag, which is based on the tricolor of the Prince’s Flag of the Dutch Republic. Not as striking as the Chicago flag, but not bad at all.

Maundy Thursday Misc.

A good Easter to all. Back on Easter Monday, which is a holiday in a fair number of countries, so why not here? Or at least something like in Buffalo, which seems to celebrate a thing called Dyngus Day.

The other day I noticed that I’ve nearly made 1,000 postings here. Not quite, but getting there. WordPress helpfully tells me the Top 10 Categories (out of 15, not counting Uncategorized) among all those posts.

Been There (526)
History (227)
Entertainment (160)
Over the Transom (152)
Public Art (105)
Food & Beverage (102)
Weather (100)
Family (83)
Holidays (66)
News (65)

I guess it’s fitting that Been There is first. It’s in the title, after all. Over the Transom is a little tricky: that’s any fool thing that comes my way without any plan, so it covers a lot of ground. Otherwise, I won’t put much stock in the ranking. For instance, I’ve posted more about weather than my family, but that hardly means I care more about the weather than them.

This made me laugh. Jonah Goldberg on the Trump administration: “I feel like I’m watching a Fellini movie without subtitles: I have no idea what’s going on.”

Here are some things young women get up to in Brooklyn. Or did in 2011.

Something to see in Denver. For the colorful art work, of course.

And maybe there is something new under the sun.

Penn Station 1956

On their return from Europe in the summer of ’56, my family passed through New York. I have some of my father’s slides from that moment, including one he took of Penn Station — the lost, lamented Penn Station — less than a decade before it was destroyed.

PennStation56To think what it might look like had it survived. Probably it would have been restored at some point, just like at Grand Central, as I saw it in 2014.

Grand Central Station 2014Not much to say in a case like that except sic transit gloria termini.

Minor Postcard Mystery

When at Half Price Books on Friday, the girls each picked up a book and I came across a box of 10 postcards. Not just any cards, but 9½ x 3¾-inch color glossy shots depicting New York City. The printing’s high quality, though the image selections are standard: the skyline from various vantages, the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, and of course the Statue of Liberty.

“Of course” because the set was originally sold by the Statue of Liberty Gift Center. The box says so. All in all, not best cards I’ve ever bought, but certainly worth the modest price that Half Price Books wanted. I didn’t open the box until I got home. Until last night, in fact.

Then I discovered that the cards were a lot more interesting than I thought. Four out of the 10 cards were already addressed and stamped, with messages written. One was addressed and stamped, but with no message. Five were blank. What a find.

For some reason, the person who (presumably) bought the cards at the Statue of Liberty took the trouble to compose the messages and prepare to mail the cards — and then didn’t, either through forgetfulness, or a change of heart, wanting to keep them after all. That was at least 10 years ago. The writer didn’t date any of them, but cards like this demand first-class postage, and she put 37¢ stamps on them. That was the rate from June 2002 to January 2006.

The signature name is a woman’s name, but the writing implies a young woman, maybe even a teenager. She seems to have been visiting a relative in New York — there’s mention of a cousin — and she also relates on more than one card that, “I went up to our room, and the bed broke! It was really funny…” Besides that, she saw the Statue of Liberty, a beach somewhere, and Boston.

Four of the cards are addressed to a western suburb of Chicago, one to Pennsylvania. In the fullness of time, I plan to add the necessary 12¢ to each card, and send them from neither metro Chicago nor New York. Even if none of the people on cards are  there any more — and it’s entirely likely that some are — someone will get each card. It will add another layer to the mystery of why there were never sent, and why, if kept as souvenirs, they were at Half Price Books.

New York Leftovers

I rode the subway a lot in New York, as I always do. Remarkable how different the stations and the cars look compared with the early ’80s, but I felt that way 10 years ago. Mainly it’s that lack of graffiti. If you’re ever interested in what the cars looked like back then, see the last 15 minutes or so of Saturday Night Fever. Upset over the turn of events, Tony rides the subway all night – sitting in cars covered with graffiti.

Another, smaller difference I wondered about: does the system use the IRT, BRT and IND designations for anything? I didn’t see them on maps or at stations. I know that they haven’t actually referred to different systems since the consolidation in 1940, but I think that even in the ’80s I saw lines referred to using those letters, at least on maps, and maybe signs in the stations – the IRT especially. Or maybe I’m misremembering. But at least as late as the 1960s, “IRT” must have been understood, hence the remarkably dated lyric:

LBJ took the IRT/Down to Fourth Street USA/When he got there what did he see?/The youth of America on LSD

The Times Square Alliance tells me 360,000 pedestrians pass through Times Square every day. Walking through it, that’s easy to believe. One evening I finished a meeting not too far away and wandered over, just to see the nighttime light spectacle again. Of course it’s a tourist destination. That should keep me away? I’d rather walk through it now than 31 years ago, which I did. The place was a dump then.

After I’d had enough of Times Square – it doesn’t take too long – I headed east toward Hell’s Kitchen. I examined restaurant menus along the way. Lesson: the further you get from Times Square, the more reasonable the prices become, though you’re always paying Manhattan prices.

Something I didn’t realize: Times Square used to be Longacre Square (or Long Acre). For a period before 1904, that is, when the Times built a new building there. (And there’s always something interesting at Shorpy.) The old name survives faintly in the Longacre Theater on West 48th St.

Another day, I also took a quick stroll through Grand Central, since I was nearby. No doubt about it, it’s a monumental space.

Grand Center Station, dammitThere’s an Apple Store in Grand Central now. That didn’t used to be there. I didn’t visit it, but I did visit the NY Transit Museum’s shop in Grand Central, and bought a few fridge magnets and postcards (just a few, they were overpriced).

Speaking of postcards, I’m happy to report that tourist shops on the streets around Times Square still sell cards at 10 or 12 for a $1. The only deal near Times Square. Remarkably, not all of the cards are crummy and unimaginative. The best ones I found were of not only the Brooklyn Bridge, but also the Manhattan and Queensboro bridges.

Under construction near the September 11 Memorial Museum: Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub – the new PATH station with service to New Jersey, that is. Behind it is the soon-to-open One World Trade Center. It might now be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, but it doesn’t stand out in the skyline like the Twin Towers did. Maybe that’s a good thing.

World Trade Center - new terminal, Oct 10, 2014Reviews of Calatrava’s design are mixed. As reviews tend to be. The station will open next year.

The National September 11 Memorial Museum

I didn’t realize it until later, but the National September 11 Memorial Museum, which is mostly underneath the former site of the World Trade Center Towers, only opened in May of this year, as opposed to the memorial, which opened in 2011. You access the museum through timed tickets. I thought it was worth visiting, but I’ll also say this: $24 is too much for any museum, regardless of subject or newness. If I hadn’t been traveling alone, and had to spend nearly $100 just to get my family in, I wouldn’t have gone, though I might have sent my children, who aren’t old enough to remember that day.

I was in the 2:30 pm line on October 10. A lot of other people entered at the same time. From the daylight at ground level, it’s something like entering a cave by walking down a wide ramp. That seemed a little odd at first, but I came around to the idea later, when I noticed signs in various parts of the museum telling me where I stood in relation to the towers, both in vertical and horizontal terms, such as Where You Are Standing Now was in the SE Corner of the North Tower, Third Basement Level (I’m making that up to illustrate the point). There would also be a graphic illustration to help you understand your position. Somehow it seemed important to know that. The space created for the museum used to be the foundation level of those behemoths.

The exhibits cover the building of the towers, their few decades of existence, their destruction, rescue efforts, the excavation, and the rebuilding, among other things. There are tributes to the first responders and the other victims, and displays about the attack on the Pentagon, and Flight 93, and the 1993 attack on the towers (the six victims of that incident are memorialized here, too, as they are at the above-ground memorial).

Much of the material was familiar, but a lot wasn’t. I was interested to learn, for instance, about Radio Row, the nickname of the Manhattan commercial district bulldozed in the 1960s to make way for the World Trade Center redevelopment (local property owners fought the eminent domain taking but lost). Some of images were arresting. Someone, for instance, made a video of the towers early in the morning of September 11, 2001, just after sunrise from the look of it, and it plays on one of the museum walls. Late summer Lower Manhattan was just minding its own business that morning.

Like any good history museum, the National September 11 Memorial Museum sports artifacts. An entire wall is an artifact: the Slurry Wall, built originally to keep the Hudson River from leaking into the lower levels of the tower, and the focus of much concern after the attacks. Namely, would it hold, or would an inundation add to the woes? It held. Part of it forms one of the walls of the museum, rising a few stories.

National September 11 MuseumThere’s also a staircase remnant, the Vesey Street Stairs. A lot of people escaped using those stairs, which survived the collapse, but were damaged during the excavation. They were installed between another staircase and an escalator that lead down into the main exhibit floor.

National September 11 MuseumTwisted girders speak of extreme violence. These are from above the 90th floor of the North Tower, near the area that absorbed the impact.

National September 11 MuseumI wasn’t sure what this was until I read the sign. It was once a section of the antenna on the North Tower.

National September 11 MuseumOne of the fire engines destroyed by falling debris.National September 11 MuseumThis artifact wasn’t moved into location. It is what’s left of one of the box columns that used to support the buildings, so in a real sense the museum was built around it and the others like it. The North Tower had 84 of them, the South Tower 73.

National September 11 MuseumThe museum wasn’t just about the history of the event or the wreckage. An interior room (“In Memoriam”) had four walls covered with faces of the dead, arrayed in rows, with their names. Computer consoles allow you to look up a biographical sketch for any name on the wall. I looked up a few at random, and picked the most unusual name I found on the wall and made a note of it. I have a fondness for unusual names, after all.

I picked Ricknauth Jaggernauth. A fellow originally from Guyana, as it happened. The following is the entirety of his profile in the NYT in October 2001.

“Every day when he came home to Brooklyn from his construction job, Ricknauth Jaggernauth would grab a beer and sit in his front yard, and play with his grandchildren and other neighborhood children until it was time for dinner. ‘My father was a happy, loving, giving man,’ said his daughter Anita, 31. ‘He loved to talk to young people about their lives and about how important it was to get a good education.’

“He would have only one or two beers, but his wife, Joyce, teased him and called him ‘drunkie grandpa,’ a nickname the children used for him. He came here from Guyana 19 years ago, and worked for a company that was renovating offices in the World Trade Center. The day it was attacked, they were working on the 104th floor of the first tower.

“Mr. Jaggernauth, 58, planned to retire in two years and wanted to visit his homeland. He had five children and three grandchildren, and all lived together in the family’s two-story house on Pennsylvania Avenue. His daughter said that if his body is recovered, the family will have a traditional Hindu funeral for him. ‘It’s what he did for his own mother,’ she said.”

The National September 11 Memorial

I knew that the centerpieces of the National September 11 Memorial were the footprints of the World Trade Center towers, and that some kind of pools had been built there. But I hadn’t followed the design or construction very closely.

So I wasn’t prepared for the square black pools with water cascading far down all four sides, down to another, smaller square into which the water seemed to vanish. Or the rows of trees canopying the grounds. Or the people on all sides, looking down into this metaphoric void. Or the names of the dead, etched in black on the parapets around the waterfalls. It was a place to stand and look.

The National September 11 Memorial

The National September 11 MemorialAnd take photographs.

The National September 11 MemorialThe National September 11 MemorialThe National September 11 MemorialThe National September 11 MemorialI understand that an organization puts flowers on the names of victims on their birthdays. So October 10 was James Andrew Giberson’s birthday. He was a fireman who lived on Staten Island, belonging to Ladder 35 in Manhattan, and last seen entering Tower 2.

The High Line

As a public, linear park in Manhattan, and driver of real estate values in its vicinity, the High Line is so new that it didn’t exist in its current form the last time I was in town in the mid-2000s. It was a derelict elevated railroad line then, but the movement to make it a park was well under way, mostly the efforts of citizens inspired by the similar park in Paris with its suitable French name, Promenade Plantée. (There’s also a linear park in development in Chicago, the Bloomingdale Line, and other places; the idea is catching on.)

More about the effort to transform the old line into the High Line is here. I didn’t know, until I read about it, that construction of the original elevated rail line was done as a safety measure, approved in 1929. It replaced a previous ground-level rail line that had been chugging through the West Side of Manhattan for decades. Turns out that running a freight train at ground level through a crowded metropolis isn’t a very good idea. The train’s path was nicknamed Death Avenue.

On the afternoon of October 10, after visiting the September 11 Memorial and Museum, I was fairly tired, but still determined to walk at least some of the High Line. I made my way to the 14th St. entrance and as soon as I was up on the line, I got my second wind. Walking most of the route, to the 30th St. entrance, didn’t tire me further. I went as far as the work on the Hudson Yards Redevelopment project, which the brand-new section of the High Line curves around beginning at 30th, but it was getting dark by then, and I decided not to go any further. The High Line is best seen in the light, better yet in the twilight.

This is the view near the 14th St. entrance, looking north.

High Line, Oct 2014Note the amenities. A plank walkway, plantings on either side, and — sometimes most importantly — places to rest. Not a lot of backless benches, either, but wooden chairs with their backs at a permanently comfortable angle. Not so comfortable you’re likely to fall asleep, but a great place to rest. Sometimes I did. Just a little further north, the High Line passes through the Chelsea Market, where various food vendors are arrayed.

The line also offers some good views of the city below. This is 15th St., looking west.

High Line, Oct 2014This is Tenth Ave., looking north.

High Line, Oct 2014On a pleasant fall afternoon, the High Line is a popular place.

High Line, Oct 2014Further north, there’s even a green tunnel, at least during the warm months.

High Line, Oct 2014At this point, rail lines are embedded in the planks. Must be left over from when the train tracks ran this way. They appear at your feet fairly often, but not always. Sometimes they course through the plantings.

New buildings have sprouted along the line.

High Line, Oct 2014I was amused to see just how many advertisements for nearby buildings bragged about being near the High Line. Once upon a time, property owners in the area wanted the elevated tracks dismantled, never imaging that they’d drive value growth for nearby properties someday.

Green-Wood Cemetery

One of the larger neighborhoods in Brooklyn is a necropolis, with about 560,000 permanent residents: Green-Wood Cemetery. Take the R line subway to either 25th St. or 34th St. station, and you’re there. Fairly early in the morning of October 14, I went to 34th St. station, got a map from the guard at the entrance, and walked right in.

“Founded in 1838 as one of America’s first rural cemeteries, the Green-Wood Cemetery soon developed an international reputation for its magnificent beauty and became the fashionable place to be buried,” the map tells me “By 1860, Green-Wood was attracting 500,000 visitors a year, rivaling Niagara Falls as the country’s greatest tourist attraction…”

Besides groundsmen and other obvious cemetery employees — including one driving a garbage truck — I noticed exactly three other people visiting Green-Wood that morning. It was a weekday, but even so cemetery tourism isn’t what it used to be.

I didn’t have all day – or even all morning – to explore the vastness of Green-Wood, so I cut a path from the 34th St. entrance to the 25th St. entrance, spending about an hour. The better way to see the place would be the trolley tours that the cemetery gives, but I couldn’t fit that into my schedule. Still, I managed to wander some of the paths.

Green-Wood Cemetery, Oct 14, 2014 And marvel that the cemetery has hills. A lot of hills. Since when does Brooklyn have hills? Turns out Brooklyn has glacial moraine hills in spots, especially the cemetery, which in fact includes the highest point in the borough (about 200 feet above sea level).

Green-Wood Cemetery, Oct 14, 2014Note the street sign. There are many streets and paths in Green-Wood and, unlike some other parts of the borough, they’re all well marked.

OLYMPUS Green-Wood Cemetery, Oct 14, 2014DIGITAL CAMERA“Today Green-Wood is 478 spectacular acres of hills, valleys, glacial ponds and winding paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums,” the map continues. It also points out that there are also 7,000 trees, though I’ve read that some of them were knocked down by Hurricane Sandy. I didn’t see any lingering damage from the storm, but I didn’t really see that much of the place, either.

I did see some funerary art. At the Michel mausoleum, for instance, a pair of dogs waits patiently for their masters – the Michels would be my guess. It’s pretty clear they aren’t guarding the place.

Green-Wood Cemetery, Oct 14, 2014Other mausoleums sported angels.

Green-Wood Cemetery, Oct 14, 2014An awfully female-looking being, considering that angels are thought to have no gender. This particular angel is associated with the mausoleum of Rocco M. Agoglia. You have to like a name like that.

Green-Wood Cemetery, Oct 14, 2014Find A Grave, for what it’s worth, tells me that “Rocco M. Agoglia of 7717 Narrows Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, died suddenly at Amityville, Long Island, on July 1, 1931. He was 69 years old. He is survived by eight sons, John, Fury, Sylvester, Arthur, Joseph[,] Rocco Jr., Herman and George, and one daughter, Mrs. Ida Carey.”

Fury? At least his many children (presumably) still had the scratch during the Depression to commission a nice mausoleum for their father in Green-Wood, which causal passersby can still see here in the early 21st century. Or maybe they couldn’t pay for it until a lot later. Or maybe Rocco himself paid for it before he needed it. Anyway, there it is.

Jesus Himself makes an appearance above this stone.

Green-Wood Cemetery, Oct 14, 2014Being such a fashionable cemetery at one time, Green-Wood sports a good many notable dead people, especially but not exclusively from the 19th century. The map notes some that are instantly recognizable, such as Henry Ward Beecher, Leonard Bernstein, DeWitt Clinton, Henry Halleck, Samuel Morse, Boss Tweed, Horace Greeley, and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Others noted include Cooper Union founder Peter Cooper, “Father of Baseball” Henry Chadwick, silent movie star William S. Hart, actress Laura Keene, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, “dancer, adventuress” Lola Montez, Broadway lyricist Fred Ebb, and “Steeplechase founder” George Tilyou.

I really wanted to visit Boss Tweed, but he was pretty deep into the cemetery, so I had to settle for a handful of other notables. Such as D.M. Bennett.

Green-Wood Cemetery, BrooklynD.M. Bennett? I’d never heard of him, either. But DeRobigne Mortimer Bennett (1818-1882), his stone says, was “the founder of The Truth Seeker, the defender of liberty and its martyr, the editor tireless and fearless, the enemy of superstition, as of ignorance, its mother, the teacher of multitudes… though dead, he still speaks to us and asks that we continue the work he left unfinished.” Though it’s arrant reductionism, I’m going to characterize him as a free-love advocate. At least, Comstock busted him for sending free-love pamphlets through the mail.

Later I found my way to the large memorial of DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828), sixth governor of New York and main impetus behind the Eire Canal (“DeWitt’s Ditch”) – which, if you think about it, makes him an indirect founder of Chicago. He has a statue atop his grave, with the plinth memorializing the building of the canal.

DeWitt Clinton StatueThe sun wasn’t in the best position for a good shot of Gov. Clinton, but I gave it a go.

DeWitt Clinton statue Note that good republican that he was, the governor’s wearing a toga. He is not, however, bare-chested, unlike a certain noteworthy statue of George Washington. The Clinton statue is by Henry Kirke Brown, better known for equestrian statues in New York.