{"id":14411,"date":"2021-06-01T13:32:46","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T17:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/?p=14411"},"modified":"2025-02-26T11:09:12","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T16:09:12","slug":"did-the-samuel-memorial-deliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2021\/06\/did-the-samuel-memorial-deliver\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the Samuel Memorial Deliver?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ellen Phillips Samuel had a vision she’d never get to see. After her death and that of her husband, a sizeable chunk of the family fortune would become an endowment to create a sculpture park along Kelly Drive between Boathouse Row and the Girard Avenue bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn top of this embankment,\u201d wrote Samuel in 1907, \u201cit is my will to have erected at distances of one hundred (100) feet apart, on high granite pedestals of uniform shape and size, statuary emblematic of the history of America, ranging in time from the earliest settlers of America to the present era, arranged in chronological order, the earliest at the south end, and going on to the present time at the north end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Samuel Memorial – North Terrace Looking North (to the Girard Avenue Bridge). Photographed March 31, 1959 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

American art had never encountered such a challenge\u2014or such an opportunity. In Europe, only the Siegesallee in Berlin, completed in 1901, might have provided something of a model. But this massive, white-marble creation was mocked as over-indulgent and vulgar, an \u201cAvenue of the Puppets,\u201d a collection of \u201cshining marble horrors…enough to rob Berlin of sleep.\u201d Not something to emulate in United States\u2014or anywhere else, for that matter.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Samuel Memorial – Laborer, by Ahron Ben Shmuel, 1958. Photographed March 31, 1959 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Samuel did <\/em>have a handle on the depth and range of American history. Her ancestors aided the cause of the American Revolution and were interred at the Mikveh Israel cemetery near 9th and Spruce Streets where she and her husband were involved as stewards. At family gatherings, the Samuels doubtless debated the who\u2019s who of American history. Her husband\u2019s nephew and namesake, Bunford Samuel, compiled 40,000 portraits of historical figures over a twenty year period. The younger Bunford\u2019s \u201cIndex to American Portraits\u201d cataloged no fewer than 58 portraits of Christopher Columbus, 61 of Benjamin Franklin, 16 of Alexander Hamilton and 14 of Benedict Arnold. Would any <\/em>of them find a home on the proposed pedestals along the Schuylkill? Ellen Samuel was too savvy to dictate that. There would have to be significant discourse before any <\/em>decisions were made. Along the way, the project might even become controversial, making it even more interesting, and perhaps all the more valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start the search process, Samuel would solicit proposals in a global crowdsourcing effort. \u201cIt is my desire that notices be inserted in the leading newspapers of the world, asking for designs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Samuel Memorial – Preacher <\/em>by Waldemar Raemisch, 1952, installed 1958. Photographed March 31, 1959. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

How would<\/em> American history be represented along this stretch of Schuylkill in America\u2018s most historic city? After Ellen Samuel\u2019s passing in 1913, J. Bunford couldn\u2019t contain his anticipation, or his mistrust, that others might not stay true to his wife\u2019s wishes. He reminded would-be designers that \u201cMrs. Samuel never intended that any artificial construction, or that standing trees should be removed to carry out her idea and ruin the sylvan beauty now existing in this locality\u2026\u201d This would not be a project dominated by balustrades or any architectural elements. According to Samuel, only historical figures on pedestals would stand amidst the park\u2019s foliage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to make absolutely certain the project would begin as it was supposed to, Samuel got ahead of things and commissioned the first figure. In keeping with the spousal will that the series begin with \u201cthe earliest settlers of America,\u201d Samuel selected the 11th<\/sup>-century Icelandic explorer and colonist Thorfinn Karlsefni who, according to his own research, \u201ccame nearest to the ideal.\u201d By demonstrating the start of the project, Samuel would be able \u201cto see, whilst I live, how the first statue would look placed in the situation selected by my wife\u2026\u201d.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Karlsefni dedication in 1920, the president of the Fairmount Park Art Association, Charles J. Cohen, reassured all in attendance that this first figure in the sculptural timeline would \u201cbe followed by\u2026 seventeen of similar proportions, all\u2026emblematic of the history of America\u201d standing 100 feet apart, as the will dictated. When complete, added Cohen, this memorial would make \u201ca splendid adornment to our Park.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, as the will directed, the project went into hibernation until after J. Bunford\u2019s passing in 1929. After it restarted, critic Dorothy Grafly noted: \u201cNo sculptural project within recent years had posed so many problems and stirred so much discussion.\u201d The Art Association\u2019s Samuel Memorial Committee reviewed all options and would set the direction. One member of the committee, R. Sturgis Ingersoll, later recalled its activities and inclinations and how, ultimately, the project strayed from Samuel\u2019s will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Samuel Memorial – Settling of the Seaboard by Wheeler Williams, 1942. Photographed March 31, 1959 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor several years,\u201d wrote Ingersoll, \u201cthe alternatives seemed to be to erect a row of portrait statuary of the important political and spiritual shapers of our destinies, or sculptural symbols of such abstractions as Faith, Democracy, Wisdom, Patriotism and Justice.\u201d But the committee took a broader view, concluding \u201cthat the subject matter of the statuary should be an expression of the ideas, the motivations, the spiritual forces, and the yearnings that have created America.\u201d And with neither of the Samuels alive to say otherwise, the committee supported commissioning architect Paul Cret to create a design \u201cconsisting of three terraces with groupings of statues at both ends of each terrace.\u201d The committee decided on sculptural sequences starting with \u201cthe early settlement of the eastern seaboard,\u201d \u201cthe creation of a nation by the political compacts of 1776 and 1787\u2026and the trek westward.\u201d Figures would embody the \u201cconsolidation of democracy and liberty\u201d and represent \u201cthe freeing of the slaves and the welcoming to our shores of countless Europeans.\u201d The committee\u2019s plan would bring the story up to the present focusing on \u201cthe physical development of man-made America,\u201d and, finally \u201cthe spiritual factors that shaped our inner life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Samuel Memorial, The Immigrant,<\/em> by Heinz Warneke, 1933. Photographed March 31, 1959. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Samuel Memorial – The Slave,<\/em> by Helen Sardeau, 1940. Photographed March 31, 1959 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In January 1933, the Samuel Memorial Committee presented its program at the Fairmount Park Art Association\u2019s annual meeting where it received unanimous approval. Then, \u201cfor the ensuing decades,\u201d according to Ingersoll, that plan was \u201cquite closely adhered to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to cast a wide net and help identify sculptors to populate Cret’s three terraces, the Art Association and the Philadelphia Museum of Art mounted three international sculpture exhibitions in 1933, 1940 and 1949. (Not exactly the donor\u2019s prescribed method, but in a similar vein, the committee believed.)  In the first of these exhibitions the public was treated to more than 360 works of art by more than 100 sculptors from around the world. The second exhibition featured more than 430 works. The third exhibition featured more than 250, enabling completion of the Samuel Memorial just after the mid-century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did the Memorial deliver on Samuel\u2019s promise to present \u201cstatuary emblematic of the history of America\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVirtually anyone who has contemplated the Samuel Memorial, even in passing, can sense that there is something unsettling about the choice of sculpture,\u201d wrote Penny Balkin Bach in Public Art in Philadelphia<\/em>. Instead of achieving Samuel\u2019s mission, the memorial stands as \u201cemblematic of that period of turmoil and transition when artists and patrons were in search of new forms and meanings in an increasingly volatile world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[Sources: Penny Balkin Bach, Public Art in Philadelphia.<\/em> (Philadelphia, Temple University Press: 1992); Dorothy Grafly, \u201cSculpture at Philadelphia: The Samuel Bequest,\u201d The American Magazine of Art<\/em>, September 1933, Vol. 26, No. 9 (September 1933); R. Sturgis Ingersoll, \u201cThe Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial,\u201d in Fairmount Park Art Association, Sculpture of a City: Philadelphia’s Treasures in Bronze and Stone<\/em> (New York: Walker Pub. Co., 1974); Joseph Bunford Samuel, A Word Sketch of Fairmount Park<\/a><\/em>, [Philadelphia: Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, 1917];  Joseph Bunford Samuel, The Icelander Thorfinn Karlsefini who visited the Western Hemisphere in 1007<\/a><\/em> (Printed for Private Distribution by J. Bunford Samuel, 1922). News accounts: \u201cPortraits by the Ten Thousand,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, November 14, 1896; \u201cAn American Portrait Index, The New York Times<\/em>, March 29, 1902; \u201cBerlin Drive a Great Failure,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, April 26, 1903; \u201cSamuel Estate\u2019s Value is $781,431,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, <\/a>November 14, 1913; \u201cModel of Park Statues Shown,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, January 30, 1916; \u201cPark to Contain Statue of Viking,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, November 16, 1919; Fairmount Park\u2019s Great Statuary Bequest, The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, January 15, 1929; \u201cTerrace Statues in Park Finished After 48 Years,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, June 12, 1961.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disclosure: The writer is on the board of directors of the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ellen Phillips Samuel had a vision she’d never get to see. After her death and that of her husband, a sizeable chunk of the family fortune would become an endowment to create a sculpture park along Kelly Drive between Boathouse Row and the Girard Avenue bridge. \u201cOn top of this embankment,\u201d wrote Samuel in 1907, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}