Monuments: New York’s No More

“Ye have the best job for a statue in the whole town,” lamented Miss Liberty to Miss Diana in O. Henry’s The Lady Higher Up. There she stood, Di ana, goddess of the hunt, poised with her bow and arrow high above Manhattan’s old Madison Square Garden, a slim, exquisitely proportioned nymph shimmering in the sun. And in the years from 1892 to 1925, she brought to rambunctious New York just a little of the glory that was Greece.

Her creator was Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a Dublin-borndescendant of French shoemakers renowned in the late 19th century for his public stat ues — New York’s equestrian Sherman, Chicago’s Lincoln, Boston’s Shaw and Washington’s Adams Memorial. Diana was his favorite, though, and from the moment Architect Stanford White asked him to sculpt her as a fitting finial for the Garden (then underconstruction), she was a labor of love, his first nude, his first ideal figure. Saint-Gau dens chose an Irish girl named Nellie Fitzpatrick as his model, made a 6-foot-tall cement study, then scaled it up to an 18-foot statue. Much too big.

Start again. This time Diana was only 13 feet tall and perfect — an 800-lb. beauty of gilded sheet copper.

Saint-Gaudens added a flowing cloak of copper sheets, so she could act as a wind vane as well, and up she went on the Garden tower, to twirl on a swivel before the prevailing breeze. New York fell in love at first sight. She became the protectress of the cat show, the horse show, the sportsmen’s show, the prizefights and circuses. Around 1905, a severe storm ripped away her cloak; from then on she was bolted securely down. She presided over William Jennings Bryan’s nomination for President, saw Jack Dempsey knock out Bill Brennan, and one sad evening in 1906 witnessed the murder of Stanford White in the Garden rooftop cafe.

Farewell to Thee. Diana’s demise came in 1925, when the New York Life Insurance Co. decided to build a skyscraper on the site. As the last boxing event got under way the night of May 5, 1925, the gravelly voice of Announcer Joe Humphreys boomed over the crowd: “Farewell to thee, O Tem ple of Fistiana, farewell to thee, O sweet Miss Diana.” He climbed from the ring, sobbing. Next day Lawyer-Statesman Elihu Root and Fight Promoter Tex Rickard stood together bare headed in the rain as a derrick lowered Diana from her pedestal.

For seven years she remained in a warehouse, while dozens of propositions were put forth. Some New Yorkers wanted her at Coney Island. Others said on the Manhattan Bridge. New York Life eventually decided to give her to New York University. But it was the middle of the Depression—and the cost of a proper tower was prohibitive. At last the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art offered her a place of honor in his main hall. And there she has remained ever since.

Gone, perhaps, but not forgotten. A few weeks ago, New York’s Mayor John V. Lindsay wrote to Philadelphia’s Mayor James Tate asking for Diana’s return to grace the new $38 million Madison Square Garden now abuilding on the site of the old Pennsylvania Station. Last week Tate replied: Never. “When no one wanted this poor little orphan girl, Philadelphia took her in, gave her a palatial home, and created a beautiful image for her.” Added Tate: “Would you really have me believe that you would give Manhattan back to the Indians if they returned the $24 you paid for it?”

Study & Copy. To be sure, New York still has Saint-Gaudens’ original concrete study in the Museum of the City of New York. Another Diana, a 9-foot bronze copy made in 1928, is owned by the Metropolitan Museum; its twin graces the Long Island garden, now public, of the late Financier John S. Phipps. But the real Diana is New York’s no more.

O. Henry had foreseen it all. “Ye must know, Miss Diana,” admonished Miss Liberty, “that ’tis with statues the same as with people—’tis not their makers nor the purpose for which they were created that influences their operations. It’s the associations with which they became associated.”