Monumental Stupidity

Syracuse tends to treat its heritage like a loony aunt. She may be filthy rich, but she's an embarrassment. So we hide her in the attic, talk about her behind her back and wish she would just go away.

Indeed, evidence of benign neglect dots our urban landscape, and the most tangible example is the shameful state of the city's dozens of monuments. These days they stand as testaments to decades of oversight rather than to those whom they honor. Left to weather from tawny bronze to streaky green from corrosion and pigeon poop, hidden in parks overgrown with brush and weeds, and crumbling from the bottom up, Syracuse's monuments are in a sad state.

The current $900,000 renovation of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Clinton Square is laudable. But had reasonable maintenance procedures been followed throughout that structure's 90 years, such a huge outlay of cash might have been avoided.

The same can be said for downtown's sculpture of Christopher Columbus, renovated in 1992 to the tune of $300,000. Had Columbus seen regular maintenance during his 67-year stand in Columbus Circle, that huge sum spent at one time might not have been necessary.

As an aging Northeastern city, Syracuse isn't alone in neglecting its monuments, and there’s really no point in pointing fingers; many cities figured the monuments, once erected, would somehow take care of themselves. Save Outdoor Sculpture!, a 10-year-old national initiative, realized the error of this thinking, so the group studied the plight of the nation's monuments and found that of 30,000 publicly accessible monuments nationwide, 45 percent are in critical need of attention and 9 percent need urgent treatment to survive.

In a 1996 study of 22 monuments commissioned by the Syracuse Parks Department, Ted Bartlett, a senior preservation planner at Armory Square architectural and preservation planner firm Crawford & Stearns, concluded that only five need minimal work and seven need routine work. The other 10 he categorized as either in critical or serious shape. Given that his report is 5 years old, the monuments' condition has likely worsened.

The field of outdoor sculpture conservation is 25 years old, but Syracuse has become enlightened only recently. About 15 years ago, the like-sized city of Albany paid for cleaning 12 of its bronzes, and Buffalo, a larger city but one facing similar problems, has an annual budget line of $500,000 dedicated to monument restoration.

Looking at the capital improvement plan for 1992, `93 and `94, City Auditor Minch Lewis reports there was $40,000 each year intended for monument restoration. Then that line item disappeared until 2000. The latest five-year plan shows $20,000 annually until 2004 for monument restoration.

“That money went toward paying for the Crawford & Stearns study as well as miscellaneous monument work,” says city Parks Commissioner Otis Jennings. Even though the line item disappears from 1995 to 1999, Jennings says the parks department requested funding each of those years. “We make requests, but they don’t always make it into the budget,” he notes.

Still, Jennings points out he has been saving up money the last two budget years until he has $40,000 to spend this summer. Lewis disagrees, stating that the budget is an annual document. "There's no actual money until they bring a project to the Common Council to get it approved," Lewis explains. "They might, when they come to council for authorization needing $40,000, they could say it was in the budget, we never spent it the other two years. But that's only a way of justifying the expenditure. It has nothing to do with cash flow or funds being provided. And there's no set-aside. The capital budget doesn't work that way."

Stone-Cold Stupid

Certainly, the Clinton Square project led to the realization that if Soldiers' and Sailors' is crumbling, perhaps the city's other memorials are in trouble. "When we finish Soldiers' and Sailors', people in the community will recognize the importance and the beauty of all the monuments, that whatever side of town you live in, if we begin restoration of these, they can serve as focal points for the community," notes city Director of Operations Joe Nicoletti, who is overseeing the seven-month Clinton Square restoration. "This city is very rich in history, and it's time to highlight that."

Jennings, parks commissioner for the entire two-term administration of Mayor Roy Bernardi, is also in favor of saving city monuments. "It's always been my initiative to do monuments restoration but, as you know, restoration of monuments is a very expensive proposition," he asserts.

Bartlett acknowledges the expense but believes the city has no choice. "A point I like to make about the older monuments is that, even though fixing them is expensive, I say, 'Whoa, time out; if they hadn't been built so well in the first place, they would have been long gone,'" he notes. "Don't say 'these old monuments,' that because they're old it's so expensive to fix them. Well, it's time; it's well overdue. The bulk of them are 100 years old."

Indeed, most of Syracuse's monuments were erected during a golden age of monument construction, between 1900 and 1911, when nine bronze or stone monuments went up. "Any city that was doing nicely in 1900 has a lot of bronze, and Syracuse is no exception," says Dennis Montagna, who directs the monument research and preservation program of the National Parks Service in Philadelphia.

While heavy on memorials to war veterans, ethnic groups and urban heroes, Syracuse has only one equestrian statue and lacks any monument to women. The city's most recent installation is the Stone Throwers in Tipperary Hill, while the oldest statuary --the Root Post Civil War Monument, dedicated in 1885--was ripped from its pedestal in Oakwood Cemetery in 1951 and probably melted for scrap. The oldest monument still in existence is the Hamilton White Memorial, erected in Fayette Park in 1899 to the memory of White, a volunteer firefighter who died in a blaze. It, along with 12 of the city’s bronze plaques, is also at the top of Jennings’ work list for this summer.

Given the track record of attention paid to our city's monuments, it's no surprise, really, that some are lost forever. Two notable ones once sat across North Salina Street from each other, both erected by William Kirkpatrick, an early benefactor of the city. One has been found; the other's whereabouts remain a mystery.

After Bronze Boy was erected in 1903, his strict German and Italian North Side neighbors subjected it to constant scorn. His naked body shocked many neighborhood residents, who seemed to take pleasure in dressing the entire 4-foot sculpture, covering him beneath the waist only or placing hats on his head. Tired of dealing with the abuse, the city finally removed the statue, also called Boy with Parrot, in 1974, placing him in the center of the duck pond at the then city-owned Burnet Park Zoo.

He remained outside after Onondaga County took over the zoo, but has spent at least the last 10 years or so in zoo employee Kate Woodle's art studio. Zoo officials plan to reintroduce Bronze Boy into the park, but they'll have to place him away from harm. His broken neck needs work, and if he were subject to endless child-touches, he'd probably fall over.

David Tessier, former development director for the city parks department, last remembers seeing Kirkpatrick's other stature, Indian Bowman, stashed in department storage in 1980."I've been here for 14 years, and I haven't seen it or am even familiar with it," Halbert says.

For those monuments that can still be tracked down, restoration is only the beginning. Ongoing maintenance is key. "Groups get really excited about doing an initial conservation of a monument, but it's the maintenance that really matters," notes Montagna. "Conservation makes such a big visual difference, but I try to get people to see that as only the first step. Where the rubber meets the road is maintenance; that's what's really important."

And, as the Soldiers' and Sailors' as well as Columbus cleanups demonstrate, it's relatively easy to raise money for that work. "It's hard to raise money for maintenance," Montagna says. "Maintenance isn't sexy; it's the initial treatments that municipalities can develop funding for. I tell people that while they're raising money for a project, at the same time raise it for treatment and an endowment. Get it all up front if you can. Then the endowment maybe lives with a not-for-profit preservation group, not the government. It can be controlled by a friends organization.”

Use a Little Soap

That maintenance needn't be complex. "The first conservation treatments were very aggressive," Montagna says. While that treatment often included sandblasting, another popular method was a high-pressure blast of tiny glass beads. "That would clean off the corrosion, but often it did more damage than necessary. All you really need to do is get the surface clean enough so it can hold a protective coating."

Often the cleaning can be as simple as a soap-and-water treatment using a natural bristle brush, or an exfoliation with crushed walnut shells. After either method, the bronzes should be waxed. "Philadelphia waxes its sculptures every year, but it could be less frequently than that," Montagna says. "Often it's just a matter of maintenance, giving an inspection and touching up the bronze where needed.

"Before the mid-1970s, conservators weren't involved in the care of monuments; there wasn't a wide assumption that they needed anything," Montagna notes. "Changes in color of bronze was seen as natural, and somehow stable. But it's actually evidence of an ongoing problem, of a corrosion that doesn't stop. Acid rain has certainly had an impact throughout the Northeast, and Syracuse seems to be especially prone to the effects of that. West of the Mississippi River, things haven't weathered nearly as badly as they have in the East."

The only bronze-colored statues in town are the Tipp Hill Stone Throwers and the spectacular monument to German poets Goethe and Schiller that stands practically hidden at the western top of Schiller Park. The rest--especially the Hamilton White Memorial, the Rock of the Marne and the Spanish-American War Memorial (see related article for locations)--have bronzes greener than a scoop of pistachio ice cream and evidence of what Bartlett calls "scab." "When it gets this green, it almost looks like lichen. It actually oxidizes and deteriorates the surface," he points out.

A goal of Montagna's NPS department is proper training and education within municipalities about how to care for monuments. "Bronzes are eminently manageable," he notes. "The programs just have to be laid out well. We help governments think the program through. We try to keep people out of the hands of those who will over-clean monuments."

Montagna says that cities often either contract for that work or set up a training program with existing city workers to ensure some sort of continuity.

Even as he approaches the end of his tenure as parks commissioner, Jennings has attempted to gather a cadre of department employees to oversee monument work. Halbert, the department's director of planning and development, heads the group of three. As civil service titleholders, their tenure with the city continues even with a change of mayoral administration.

"I've got them," Jennings says about the group. "And this is where they need to stay. At the same time, we have to have more money put toward our system so we don't lose this stuff. As for myself, I'm going to stay active as long as I'm in the city and in the Parks Department. This has become a driving passion for me."

That much is clear in the pride Jennings takes in the year-old virtual tour of city monuments that can be accessed from the city of Syracuse's Web site. "There is no question that the monuments have been taken for granted for years," he says. "That's why I did this tour on our Web site {www.syracuse.ny.us/parks}. I am hopefully educating the public to go out monument touring, see the monuments, and read about the monuments and the history that it brings to the city."

The five-year master plan that the parks department submitted to the Common Council in early April contains the annual line item for monuments restoration. After an April 25 budget hearing, 3rd District councilor and chair of the finance committee James Mahaney is confident the line will remain. “I have heard nothing from any councilors to indicate that that line is in jeopardy,” he notes. “And we’re not likely to eliminate so small an allocation to create money elsewhere.”

Parks committee chair and Councilor-at-Large Joanie Mahoney agrees that the line is important. "It is a priority with me," she says. "And I know that Jim Mahaney knows the desperate needs of the Parks Department to restore some of those monuments. We give them a shoestring budget and ask them to run all the programs they run. The little money that the Parks Department gets unfortunately means that the monuments have had to take a back seat."

Indeed, the Parks budget is a mere 2 percent of the city’s overall budget of $187.6 million, says Lewis. The Common Council has until May 8 to approve the budget.

Should the budget line disappear again, both Jennings and Nicoletti stress that they’ll sniff out state and federal sources of funding for monuments restoration. “We are looking at more grant funding as well as trying to combine grant funding with city funds to make the money go farther,” Jennings says. “We’re also prepared to ask the Common Council to bond for work on one monument a year.”

Fences Make Bad Neighbors

Still, Jennings could get double the amount he's requesting and he'd have trouble battling a larger factor in the statuary's condition: neighborhood apathy. Consider the Le Moyne Drinking Fountain at Washington Square Park on the city's North Side, or at least what's left of it. It stands more as a testament to the power of graffiti than as an homage to the founders of Syracuse's salt industry.

As part of his recommendation for the monument's health, Bartlett suggested that the neighborhood adopt it. The city listened. "We've been working for the last four years at trying to get neighborhood pride re-established in Washington Square Park," says Halbert, noting that United Parcel Service has partnered with the city to further that effort. "And we have been successful in many ways. We still have a year or two to go before we see not just reduced vandalism and reduced graffiti, but no vandalism and no graffiti. Some kids have even helped paint the structure {the monument} that they helped graffiti."

"It's getting the neighborhood to take pride in the park, getting them to believe that it's their neighborhood, it's their park, and that they're both the cause and the cure," Halbert adds. "Once you define that, there's many different ways to get the community involved."

That could be as simple as the neighborhood not tolerating any vandalism. The Stone Throwers monument on Tipp Hill is a shining example of how neighbor vigilance goes a long way toward protecting these treasures.

But more established monuments can benefit, too. The Polish-American War Veterans monument stands in good condition at the western end of Pulaski Park in front of Sacred Heart Basilica on West Genesee Street. And although the Italian-American War Veterans memorial in Grosso Park on the North Side saw its share of damage in the past, lately it has held its own. "Both of those are in as good a shape as they could be because the neighborhood takes care of them," Bartlett notes.

A sad example of a neighborhood monument that stands forlorn on a western drumlin in Schiller Park is the Goethe-Schiller Monument. The edifice to the German poets was dedicated in 1911 by the German neighbors with these now ironic words: "There is an absolute assurance that it will be an ornament to the city, an art object worth a visit from any stranger in town, a monument in which all Syracusans take pride."

As further insult, a fence surrounds the monument, purportedly to keep out vandals; instead, especially because a hole is often torn in the fence, it seems to encourage graffiti artists to deface a monument that is essentially hidden. "That's so sad," Bartlett says. "It's deteriorated, it's almost abandoned. Unfortunately, that monument went up at a time when we looked at parks differently, when families would have a Sunday picnic in the park."

Jennings agrees that fencing Goethe-Schiller is unfortunate, but it was also necessary. "It's sad that we live in a time when they had to fence that," notes Jennings of the fence that was erected in 1963. "It hasn't been abused as much as some of the other monuments probably because people don't know it's there, it's hidden. I'm hoping that we get the fencing taken down."

But it really makes no sense to move the monument from its location. “In my opinion, it’s not feasible to move it,” says Jennings. “I wouldn’t want to move it. It was placed there for a reason. We can police the area better and expose it better so people can respect it. I intend to clean up the area, redo the back steps, open it up from the trees and take the fence from around it.”

Again, Albany provides a good example of how to treat a monument. When asked if the city has fenced any of its statuary, Albany Parks Commissioner Bill Bruce does a verbal double take. "Fenced? You mean so that if a stone falls off, no one is hit by one? No monuments are fenced off, they're accessible to everyone. We've been installing a fine crushed stone path to all of them so they're handicapped- and stroller-accessible."

If Albany is confident enough to model monumental respect, then surely Syracuse can. Jennings' recent concern is a laudable first step, but clearly the job will belong to the city's next parks commissioner. "I know we have to put more money toward our monuments so we don't lose this stuff," Jennings says. "If we can't raise monies from government, we need to do it through private business and organizations and community groups that need to invest in their parks system. We need to take a strong position on having monument restoration and maintenance, and we need to take one monument per year so we don't lose these historic treasures."

Mapping the Monuments

Pride may be a deadly sin, but lack of pride spells doom to any city. Syracuse is a sociologist's dream: How to explain a city that revels in monumental snowfall totals but not in its monuments to history? An academic exercise can't erase nearly 100 years of neglect evidenced in the greening bronze statuary and crumbling granite supports that at one time meant something to a city that meant something to its citizens.

Consider these urban monuments--in no particular order of distress; they're all hurting--as examples of the overall state of this city's outdoor sculpture. The good news is their problems are fatal only if they're ignored.

• Fayette-Firefighters' Memorial Park at the eastern edge of downtown Syracuse holds five monuments, three of them statues. The Hamilton White Monument, dedicated in 1905 to the memory of a volunteer fireman who died in a blaze, suffers the most. Atop the central granite pedestal sits a greening bronze bust of White; flanking the pedestal are two even-greener bronzes.

Many of the supporting blocks for the monument have separated. "This is quite a beautiful monument," notes Ted Bartlett, a preservation planner at the Armory Square firm Crawford & Stearns. "It's deceptive how bad a condition it's in. Everything has shifted, the foundation has gone awry and things have opened up. All this needs to get taken apart, a new concrete pad poured and then put back together. It's not a highly complex project, it's just one that has to be done carefully.”

Also standing in Fayette Park, also called Firefighters’ Park because the city has grouped the monuments related to that profession in one area, is the Philip Eckel Monument, dedicated in 1900 and originally located at the corner of North Salina, Butternut and State streets and then at North Salina and Pearl streets until Interstate 81 forced its final move downtown. The Collins Block Fireman’s Memorial was dedicated in 1939 and carries the names of firefighters killed doing their jobs. Bartlett also considers the cast-iron fence surrounding the park a monument, as well as a bell tower built in 1979.

• At the northwestern end of town in Washington Square Park sits the Le Moyne Drinking Fountain, or rather part of the fountain. The remainder of the one-time water trough for horses collects dust in storage at the city of Syracuse Parks Department on Spencer Street. When it was dedicated in 1908, the fountain jutted into Park Street. After it was hit by a car in 1968, the entire monument was removed from the park. In 1972, the city reinstalled the monument 10 feet into the park, just enough, apparently, to make it fair game for every rude graffiti artist in town.

• Still north, the Italian-American World War II Veterans Memorial stands as a waterlogged shadow of its former self. The 12-sided edifice topped with stars in relief at one time held glass-enclosed names of the war dead--magnets for vandals. "Why don't they redesign those panels and do something more permanent with the rolls, even if it's granite and we etch the names in?" notes Bartlett. "It's made from Indiana limestone, so it's soft. This needs a roof, it needs something to prevent water from coming down into the monument."

• Just north of downtown on Salina Street stands the city's most handsome monument, erected in 1905 to honor Civil War General Gustavis A. Sniper. Syracuse's only equestrian monument has weathered poorly even as it faithfully holds forth in a small green space enhanced by flowers and a locked steel picket fence. Until the statue was fenced, Sniper's sword kept disappearing, and it's still missing.

"This bronze needs to be cleaned," Bartlett points out. "Between the letters in 'Sniper' the stone is exfoliating from moisture, and that needs to be consolidated and repaired."

• Near Syracuse Stage in Forman Park stands the Redfield-Forman Monument, dedicated in 1908 to the memory of Joshua Forman, a judge and early promoter of the Erie Canal, and Lewis Redfield, the first journalist in Onondaga County. Sitting at the base of the monument, which cost approximately $10,000, is a bronze of a Native American meant to represent Hiawatha. The bronzes, which look west toward Interstate 81, have faded to green, and the faint remnants of removed graffiti deface the pedestal's granite. On the eastern side of the base, the word "Redfield" juts out enough to collect grime from its urban setting.

"{Interstate} 81 is making it deteriorate quicker," Bartlett notes. "It should be moved to the other end of the park or turned around. At one time it had a nice view of a residential area, before 81 was built. It's not appreciated here. There is a preservation argument that this is where it always was, but where it is isn't what it always was like, either. The other side of the coin is you leave it here, even if you fix it, it's just going to get the same abuse from 81 and from the side streets." So move it.

• Syracuse's most unusual memorial sits in a most unusual place. Probably the best time to get close to the Erie Canal Monument, constructed out of Onondaga limestone from the canal's Lodi Locks, is early morning or late at night; otherwise, you're crossing three lanes of Erie Boulevard at Teall Avenue. "That's a classic example that some basic, minimal masonry repair will buy the monument another 50 years," notes Bartlett. "It's not a user-friendly monument, but what's interesting is that it's right in the middle of a transportation corridor, so, well, it's right where it should be."

• Finally, in Billings Park just south of Adams Street, The Rock of the Marne and the Spanish-American War Memorial stand, forgotten, as silent sentries to downtown. Does anyone really appreciate these beauties erected in the early 1920s? "Both of these need work," says Bartlett, "and they're threatened, I think, because of possible vandalism. They're just kind of there, with no one to look at them."

--Molly English