General George Washington, Union Square

• Sculptor: Henry Kirke Brown
• Pedestal: Richard Upjohn
• Dedicated: 1856
• Medium and size: Bronze (approximately 9 feet), granite pedestal (approximately 9 feet)
• Location: South side of Union Square, facing 14th Street between University Place and Broadway

November 25: Evacuation Day, A Forgotten New York City Holiday

Through the nineteenth century, the image was familiar: a sailor climbing up a flagpole to hoist the Stars and Stripes. The British, finally evacuating New York in 1783 – two years after the last battle in the Revolutionary War – had left a mocking memento. They nailed the British flag to the pole at the Battery, cut the halyards and greased the pole. To the cheers of a patriotic crowd, a sailor finally shimmied up the pole and raised the American flag in its place. Then, at last, General George Washington rode down Broadway to ceremonially reclaim the city for the Americans.

In his biography of George Washington, Washington Irving recorded an eyewitness account of Evacuation Day, 11/25/1783:

We had been accustomed for a long time to military display in all the finish and finery of garrison life; the troops just leaving us were as if equipped for show, and with their scarlet uniforms and burnished arms, made a brilliant display; the troops that marched in, on the contrary, were ill-clad and weather beaten, and made a forlorn appearance; but then they were our troops, and as I looked at them and thought upon all they had done and suffered for us, my heart and my eyes were full, and I admired and gloried in them the more, because they were weather beaten and forlorn. — Washington Irving, Life of George Washington(1855-1859)

Above: An engraving done in 1883, a century after Evacuation Day, depicts the scene at Battery Park as a sailor hoists the American flag. The British flag falls to the ground as British troops row to their ships. Behind the flagpole, anachronistically, is Castle Clinton, which was not constructed until 1808-1811, when fears of another British invasion impelled New Yorkers to build harbor defenses.

The devastation he saw on his way downtown must have dismayed even as courageous a man as the Commander-in-Chief. During the seven-year British occupation two catastrophic fires had swept through the city. Fortifications disrupted street traffic. Public buildings, used as barracks or stables, were in shambles. The wharves and warehouses on which New York’s thriving pre-war trade had depended were falling to pieces; the merchant fleet that had sustained them was gone.

For over a hundred years November 25th, “Evacuation Day,” was celebrated in New York with a military parade and a school holiday. Today its only public memorial is the equestrian statue of George Washington in Union Square, which commemorates the moment and the spot where Washington met a deputation of citizens sent to officially welcome him to the city. Testimony to the importance of Evacuation Day is the fact that the Washington was the first large-scale bronze erected in the city after the Revolutionary War. The work of Henry Kirke Brown and the young John Quincy Adams Ward (who later became one of the most noted American sculptors), it was unveiled on July 4, 1856.

Above: Parade down Broadway in honor of the centennial of Evacuation Day, from Valentine’s Manual of Old New York, 1922. Caption: “Parades in New York. Celebration of Evacuation Day, November 26th, 1883, as seen on Broadway looking north from Fulton Street, showing St. Paul’s Church, where Washington worshipped when president, and ‘cops’ mauling citizens.”

Early History of This Sculpture

New York’s Washington was the second equestrian statue to be erected in the United States. The first was the General Jackson near the White House, unveiled in 1853. Washington was funded mostly by New York merchants and designed by Henry Kirke Brown (see Lincoln), who completed it with the assistance of the young John Quincy Adams Ward. The work was unveiled in 1856, on the eightieth anniversary of the signing of theDeclaration of Independence.

Above: Rally on April 20, 1861, in Union Square, with Washington “carrying” the flag fired on by Confederates at Fort Sumter – the shots that set off the Civil War. According to Burroughs and Wellcome (Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898), the crowd of 100-250,000 was the largest public gathering up to that time in North America.

Above: The same 1861 rally, in an artist’s rendition.

Ground Zero

Walking near Ground Zero 220 years later, looking at the raw excavations and the rising steel skeletons of new construction, it’s heartening to recall that New York has been struck by disaster before, and New Yorkers  – stubborn, creative, and commercially minded – have always rebuilt their city better than ever, just as they did after the Revolutionary War.

More

• For more on Evacuation Day, see Burrows & Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, pp. 259-62.
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