HOLLEY HOLY, WASHINGTON SQUARE

WHO is that guy? Two memorials to historic figures stand in WSP, one to Giuseppe Garibaldi, a founder of the united Italy, and the lesser-known 1889 Alexander Lyman Holley Memorial, featuring a bust by John Quincy Adams Ward.

While traveling in Europe, he observed the Bessemer process for making steel and realized its practicality and efficiency. When he returned to the states, he convinced his employer to buy the American patents for it and he became the foremost designer of steel works in the country.

The monument was dedicated Oct. 2, 1890, a gift from three professional engineering societies, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers, though money was raised from related professional groups around the world.

Not everyone was thrilled by the gesture. Many critics, including the editorial boards of several New York newspapers, complained that Holley was hardly a household name. Dianne Durante, author of “Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan,” records the NY Times’s indignant (and rather tortured) thesis from April 24, 1890: “The time is coming … when sites for statues in the Park will be too scarce to be assigned to effigies from which the general public will derive its first knowledge that the originals of them have existed.” NYC Statues

I’d have to say that most of the people who throng Washington Square in the warm months take little notice of these two statues, and if anyone stops to view them, they’re from out of town: most of NYC’s out of towners take more notice of its infrastructure than dyed in the wool residents. But without Holley, the steel used to build the cars, trains and planes that brought them here might not exist in the forms they have today.

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5/2/23