Politics and Memory

Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York

Akela Reason

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Hardback

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English

Yale University Press
05 October 2025

Art Treatments & Subjects

A rich history of Gilded Age partisan politics, aesthetics, and the creation of New York City's Civil War monuments

In the decades following the Civil War, New York City built more monuments to the Union cause than any other city in the nation outside of Washington, DC. Ranging from simple standing soldiers to grand triumphal arches and temples, these monuments shaped commemorative aesthetics and iconography at the local and national levels. Unlike Confederate monuments, which were mostly initiated by private organizations, New York's soldiers' monuments were largely supported through city and state funding. These civic projects attracted the interest of competing groups, including artists, politicians, veterans, and the public, that all sought to influence the growing commemorative landscape. Works such as the Brooklyn Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument outside Prospect Park and the New York Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park were created in a fractious political landscape and defined as much by municipal maneuvering as by artistic principle.

Illuminating the historical context of Civil War soldiers' monuments in New York City, Akela Reason explores the complex and fascinating intersection of art, politics, and memory within these works, while also highlighting the ever-changing ways different constituencies have engaged with them in symbolic and physical terms.

By: Akela Reason
Imprint: Yale University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 254mm, Width: 203mm,
ISBN: 9780300256499
ISBN 10: 0300256493
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 05 October 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Akela Reason is associate professor of history and director of the Museum Studies Certificate Program at the University of Georgia.

Reviews for Politics and Memory: Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York

""Politics and Memory is an intellectually ambitious work grounded in intricate narratives from primary sources and astute examinations of the monuments themselves.""--Michele H. Bogart, author of The Politics of Urban Beauty: New York and Its Art Commission ""Politics and Memory provides a rich, illuminating history of nineteenth-century monument making and a clear-eyed assessment of a city that was anything but a bastion of progressive ideals.""--Jennifer Wingate, author of Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America's World War I Memorials ""Akela Reason has mined archival sources to reveal the complicated, and often bewildering, political and artistic negotiations behind New York's Civil War monuments.""--Evie Terrono, Randolph-Macon College