Avenue of Forgotten Famous People

I was speaking at a conference at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, but since I was staying in a hotel downtown I took various methods to go back and forth, including walking the length of Commonwealth Avenue, which is a beautiful avenue lined with late 19th Century townhouses and with a grassy boulevard park down the middle.  In each block is a sculpture and so I decided to track the statues, west to east.  What was most significant about this task was that most of the honorees were completely unknown to me.  Now the degree to which that is a function of my own ignorance is certainly up for debate, but it struck me as both sad and wonderful that these people were commemorated.

Domingo F. Sarmiento

Domingo F. Sarmiento looking grumpy

The first statue is of Domingo F. Sarmiento, a 19th Century president of Argentina.  It isn't at all clear what his connection to Boston might be, but the sculpture wasn't placed until 1973, a gift from the government of Argentina.

It appears he was quite the champion of education.  The sculpture is really fine, but it is odd how the markedly twentieth century sculptural style makes it so difficult to imagine this man as a 1850s political figure.

Boston Women's Memorial -- Lucy Stone, Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley

Three famous women ready to make a break for it.

In the next block was a rather interesting sculptural group honoring three significant women in Boston (and US) history.  It really is one of the oddest (not necessarily bad) sculptural pieces I've encountered  The three women are cast in bronze, each attached to a granite slab, but the figures are life-sized and are beside rather than atop their pedestals, giving the impression that they have come to life and are just sort of hanging out, waiting for a chance to make a getaway.  It was placed in 2003, and even though the bronze castings are very traditional, they still have a very modern feel.

Lucy Stone was probably the first to really take up the issue of women's rights in the United States, with her writings inspiring the activities of Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the more famous advocates of women's rights that followed after her.  Lucy Stone was a staunch abolitionist and was also the first woman recorded to keep her own name after marriage.

Abigail Adams giving me a "Oh no you di'nt!" stare.

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American poet and the first African American woman to publish a book.  Details are a little sketchy, but she was born in West Africa and sold to a wealthy Boston family, the Wheatleys.  Her first name was chosen by her mistress from the name of the ship that brought her to the U.S.  These facts are really so disturbing to think about a human being treated that way.  She died, in slavery, at the age of 31.

And Abigail Adams, of course is the famous wife and partner of John Adams.  I have to say that her depiction here has her dishing out a lot more sass than I ever imagined her doing.

Samuel Eliot Morison

Samuel Morison sporting a super casual look.

In the next block was another fellow of whom I'd never heard before.  The sculpture suggested someone with an affinity for the sea and storytelling.  There was a quote that included tons of archaic spelling (i.e., abounde, etc.) that made me think he was probably a little full of himself if he was actually a writer.  It turns out he was a Rear Admiral in the US Navy Reserve, and known for his books about maritime history that were (according to Wikipedia) "authoritative and highly readable."  I hope that's correct, as the quote on the base did not strike me as highly readable.  And he earned 11 honorary doctoral degrees.  I ought to want to look up what he wrote and read it, but sadly, I don't.

William Lloyd Garrison

Lloyd Garrison kicking back after delivery a fiery anti-slavery rant

Next block, another unknown man:  William Lloyd Garrison.  (And by the way, why does "Lloyd" need two "L's"?)  Very nice, seated figure, but not a clue as to who he is...so Wikipedia must come to the rescue once again.  Seems like he was a pretty great guy...a tireless advocate for the abolitionist cause and was the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator.  In Wikipedia's eclectic style, we also learn that he sold lemonade and homemade candy as a child.  He was an advocate for immediate and complete emancipation which put him at odds with many others in the abolitionist cause that preferred a gradual emancipation.  He caused a great stir when he burned the US Constitution publicly on July 4, 1854, claiming it was "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell," because of the way it coded slavery into the founding philosophy of the US. Apparently Frederick Douglass felt that you could still read the Constitution as an anti-slavery document, and as a result the two leaders had a major falling out. This doesn't explain why there are two "L's", but Lloyd was his mother's maiden name and she insisted that he go by it. I suppose Lloyd must be Welsh.

Patrick Andrew Collins

And in the next block I encounter a monument to is another famous person I've never heard of.  Collins was born in Ireland, moved with his family to Massachusetts, was a successful upholsterer, went to Harvard Law School, and then led an extensive life as a Massachusetts politician, ultimately serving as Mayor of Boston for the last 4 years of his life.  I feel somewhat vindicated in knowing nothing about him.  The sculpture is just a bust on a very tall plinth, flanked by two female allegorical figures.  The figures are lovely, but they are so "allegorical" that I couldn't really figure out anything specific that they represented.

John Glover of Marblehead

John Glover being nostalgic about his days as a cordwainer

In the next block, in spite of being forgotten, John Glover cuts by far the most dashing profile on the boulevard.  I'm sorry the light was such and the iPhone camera is so crude that it didn't capture a better image of this statue.  It really is terrific.  Glover was a businessman and fisherman from Marblehead, MA, who became a general of military significance during the American Revolution.  I'm sort of surprised that I have never heard his name before, as it seems that he was instrumental in several campaigns during the war.  I know, that in general, I've read more about the American Revolution than most people, so I figure there is widespread ignorance of his contributions.  It makes me wonder what is even taught anymore in our schools about any details of the American Revolution.  It seems that it may be so far off the measure of "significance" that it doesn't matter, as whenever people complain about what kids don't know, the American Revolution seems so remote that it isn't even on the radar as something that people don't know enough about.

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton caught by surprise.

I get to the last block before reaching Arlington Street and the Public Garden and find this tribute to Alexander Hamilton.  Ok, so he's famous.  it's a strange statue, though, and the only one in the sequence that isn't bronze, and seems sadly out of place.  And in an effort to give it some classic toga-like reference, Alex is depicted with a robe loosely slung around his lower half.  It looks most like one of those scenes from a movie where someone in bed has to get up in a hurry, and instead of getting dressed just rips the sheets off the bed and wraps them up loosely to conceal any nakedness...which is doubly sort of odd here in that the figure is fully dressed.










So that sort of ends the tour, except for two sculptures not strictly on Commonwealth Avenue but part of this tour.

Washington on his steed.

First an equestrian statue of George Washington in the Boston Public Garden.  I don't really know anything about it, but in general, it is a lot more satisfying than either of the two Washington equestrian statues I saw in Washington, D.C.

Preachers used to have really great robes.

And then finally, a monument I like to visit every trip to Boston simply because I love the inscription so much.  The statue is of William Ellery Channing, one of the foremost Unitarian ministers and much involved in the transcendentalist movement of the 19th Century.  The statue looks directly across Arlington St and the Arlington Street Church which, though a Unitarian Church, is not where he actually preached.

The inscription:

I see the mark of God in the heavens and the earth, but how much more in a liberal intellect, in magnanimity, in unconquerable rectitude, in a philanthropy which forgives every wrong and never despairs of the cause of Christ and human virtue.  I do and I must reverence human nature.  I bless it for its kind affections, honor it for its achievements in science and in art and still more for its examples of heroic and saintly virtue. These are marks of a divine origin and the pledges of a celestial inheritance, and I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.

What this exercise reinforced in me is a simple message, yet one that bears reinforcement.  It matters little what lasting fame one achieves, but rather that we have an impact on those we come in contact with, no matter how great or limited that sphere of influence.