Pedestal Design for the Seventh Regiment Memorial in Central Park

Pedestal Design for the Seventh Regiment Memorial in Central Park

Jacob Wrey Mould

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This pedestal design relates to a memorial statue that stands in Central Park on West Drive near 69th Street. A bronze figure by John Quincy Adamds Ward honors Union soldiers from the Seventh New York Regiment killed in the Civil War. Mould was a British architect who moved to New York in 1852 and contributed many notable Central Park features such as the Belvedere Castle and decorative carvings on the Bethesda Terrace. His gothic conception for this pedestal was, however, not approved and eventually replaced with a more Roman conception by Richard Morris Hunt. Finished in 1869, the monument was not unveiled until 1874.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pedestal Design for the Seventh Regiment Memorial in Central ParkPedestal Design for the Seventh Regiment Memorial in Central ParkPedestal Design for the Seventh Regiment Memorial in Central ParkPedestal Design for the Seventh Regiment Memorial in Central ParkPedestal Design for the Seventh Regiment Memorial in Central Park

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.