File:Peace Monument and Dome of the U.S. Capitol.jpg

Peace Monument Pennsylvania Avenue at 1st St. NW Sculptor: Franklin Simmons Date: 1877 Medium: Marble

---unlike most Civil War memorials that honor individuals, this one honors a group

---inscription: In Memory of the Officers, Seamen and Marines of the United States Navy Who fell in Defense of Union and Liberty of Their Country 1861-1865

---unlike most Civil War statues that had elaborate dedications, parades, speeches, this one had none of that…no bands appeared, no fanfare whatsoever

---the lack of fanfare was in part due to a running feud between Admiral David Dixon Porter and Sec./Navy Gideon Welles that dated from the early days of the Civil War. Porter knew that most of the statues after the war would go to honor the glory of the army and he decided that the nation’s capitol needed a memorial to the hero’s of the navy.

---Porter acted on his own, using his influence as Superintendent of the US Naval Academy to get this monument

---launched a fundraising campaign among officers, sailors and marines for what he called the Naval Monument, collecting $21,000

---Porter knew what he wanted the monument to look like, sketching his own design

---1881, Porter personally selected American sculptor Franklin Simmons without a competition

---Simmons was most noted for his 1867 Civil War Memorial in Lewiston, ME, which was one of the first such memorials in the country

---Simmons created more than 100 portrait busts, statues and monuments during his career including a marble statue of Ulysses S. Grant in the Capitol

---Sec/Navy Welles was furious with Porter about his presumptions that this memorial was needed to off set the many statues going up to the glory of the armies. Welles refused to help fund it, as well as refusing to designate a site.

---1872 Porter appealed to Congress which appropriated $20,000 for the base and installation, but also threw in the prime location at the foot of the Capitol Building

---Simmons worked on the monument in his studio in Rome where he had moved in 1867, using Porters sketch, he added his own brand of mid-19th century naturalism

---Completed in 1876, shipped to Washington in sections…the white marble sections were placed on the base of blue granite designed by Architect of the Capitol Edward Clark

---monument is 40’ tall, crowned by two elaborately draped allegorical women, who represent America, sometimes identified as Grief, weeping on the shoulder of history over the loss of her naval defenders. History holds the book in which these hero’s deeds are inscribed. Its cover reads: “They died that their country might live”

---on the west façade stands Victory, a woman holding a laurel wreath in her right hand and an oak branch in her left. She crowns the triumphs of the US Navy at sea, represented by the two chubby infants playing at her feet--Neptune, god of the sea, with his trident, and Mars, god of war with his helmet and sword.

---on the east façade is Peace, another woman holding an olive branch in her right hand. To her left, a dove, now broken off, one alighted on a sheaf of wheat, which together with a cornucopia symbolize plenty and agriculture. On her right, are a gear, a book, an angle, and other tools of science, literature, and art, symbols of the progress that accompanies Peace

---surrounding the monument is a basin made up of four semi-circles into which water once flowed from the low fountains on each side. The original plans called for bronze dolphins and lamps around the base but Porters funds weren’t enough to add those items nor did the goodwill of Congress extend that far to appropriate additional funds

---Porter was thrilled with Simmons work, although the public was not. The “Washington Star” reported in 1877 that “the statue was deficient in originality and power”…”the artist was hampered to some degree in his efforts given that the design was in whole or in part that of a high naval officer, who probably knows more about the high seas than he does about high art”

---After the installation in 1877, Porter who had long envisioned this memorial as the Naval Monument found it being referred to as the Peace Monument by the local press at the turn of the century when they began to note that the marble of the statue had begun to deteriorate

---in the early 1970’s anti-war protestors made the Peace Monument a rallying point.

---cleaned and restored in the early 1990’s several pieces have broken off including little Mars’s sword and his left foot and Peace’s olive branch and dove.

---Now surrounded by a traffic circle and a parking lot the monument is isolated by asphalt