By: Tim Ott
From towering obelisks to compact tributes to heroism, these landmarks are can’t-miss destinations for history buffs.
A soldier stares up at the United States National Memorial Arch, circa 1950.
Across the East Coast of the United States, markers of the Revolutionary War are easy to find. Between battlefield monuments, historic roads, houses and gravesites, the region is heavily populated with memorials to this formative chapter of American history.
Of course, some monuments are more mesmerizing than others, either because of the architectural effort that went into their creation or the stories they highlight. Here are eight Revolutionary War memorials that are worth the visit.
The first monument authorized by the Continental Congress went not to George Washington or another widely remembered icon of the era, but to Irish-born Major General Richard Montgomery. Following Montgomery’s death at the Battle of Quebec on New Year’s Eve 1775, Benjamin Franklin successfully lobbied renowned French sculptor Jean-Jacques Caffieri to create the commemorative artwork. The marble monument was originally destined for Pennsylvania’s Independence Hall, but it instead sat unassembled in the purgatory of a North Carolina port for much of the war’s duration before its 1788 installation outside the east window of St. Paul’s Chapel in the then-capital city of New York. Montgomery’s remains were eventually reinterred beneath the monument, which underwent a complete restoration in 2011.
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In 1873, then-unknown artist Daniel Chester French was hired to sculpt a statue for the centennial of the April 1775 Battle of Concord. He drew inspiration from the contortions of the Apollo Belvedere statue of antiquity to devise a 7-foot rendering of a yeoman farmer setting aside his plow for a rifle. Cast in bronze from old Civil War cannons, the Minute Man was an immediate sensation and established the reputation of the artist who later created the seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial.
“It was maybe the most iconic American sculpture of the whole 19th century, even into the 20th,” explains Harold Holzer, author of Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French. “It was the emblem of U.S. savings bonds. It was the brand that was used for military recruitment in World War I and on into World War II…The idea of the farmer who senses danger and responds, it was a big deal in its day.”
Rejected designs include an Egyptian-style pyramid. And his hand gestures have symbolic meaning.
Rejected designs include an Egyptian-style pyramid. And his hand gestures have symbolic meaning.
Almost exactly 110 years after the tide-turning January 1777 Battle of Princeton, the Princeton Battle Monument Association was incorporated to “fill what they thought was a gap in the Princeton landscape and [in] the memorialization of American history,” says Stephanie Schwartz of the Historical Society of Princeton. However, it took 20 years for the association to raise funds and settle on French-trained sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies, then another 15 years for the finished limestone product to be unveiled to the public. In between, MacMonnies took his cues from Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” painting and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to fashion a bas-relief of George Washington on horseback surrounded by soldiers and allegorical figures. Although an eye-opening sight, the 50-foot-tall monument has also drawn criticism for being out of scale for this small New Jersey town.
Ten days after American and French forces claimed a resounding victory at Yorktown in October 1781 to essentially end the war, the Confederation Congress enacted a resolution that directed the raising of “a marble column…inscribed with a succinct narrative of the surrender of Earl Cornwallis to his excellency General Washington.” It took another century for the cornerstone of this structure to be laid in October 1881, but the end result likely would have pleased the Founding Fathers. Designed by architects Richard Morris Hunt and Henry Van Brunt with sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward, the monument features a four-sided base with inscriptions, a podium ringed by 13 female figures to symbolize the colonies and the personification of Liberty atop a towering column. When Liberty was destroyed in an electrical storm in 1942, sculptor Oskar J.W. Hansen created a new, larger version that brought the monument’s total height to 98 feet.
Woven into the narrative of the American origin story is the tale of hardship endured at the Continental Army camp of Valley Forge through the winter of 1777-78. Initial plans to have commemorative arches built on opposite sides of what was then a state park fell through when Congress approved the construction of a single arch in 1910. The park commission selected French-born architect and University of Pennsylvania professor Paul Philippe Cret for the job. Cret modeled his project after the nearly 2,000-year-old Roman Arch of Titus, producing a stunning 60-foot-tall creation that was well-received at the June 1917 dedication ceremony. Eventually, cracks began to appear in the granite, leading to a restoration of the arch in the late 1990s.
With the British bearing down on a key military supply depot at Bennington in August 1777, Continental General John Stark led a contingent of Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts troops to head off the threat in nearby Walloomsac, New York. Although the skirmish wasn’t as consequential as the subsequent Battles of Saratoga, the Bennington Battle Monument Association that formed in 1876 sought to make sure that the contributions of the members’ predecessors wouldn’t be overlooked.
“From the start, Governor [Hiland] Hall pushed for a grand design, stating that a smaller monument would ‘remain unknown to the world,’” says Laura V. Trieschmann, Vermont state historic preservation officer. “There was a competition, with Hall rejecting each [entry] as not monumental enough.”
The winning design of J. Phillip Rinn proved worthy of Hall’s grand ambitions. Upon its completion in 1891, the magnesian limestone obelisk stretched to a height of 306 feet, 4.5 inches, making it the second tallest unreinforced masonry building in the U.S. after the Washington Monument.
Just 9 structures can lay claim to being the tallest in history.
Just 9 structures can lay claim to being the tallest in history.
Before he donned the proverbial red coat, Benedict Arnold led a daring charge that helped the Continental Army claim the October 1777 Second Battle of Saratoga and left his left leg shattered. Recognizing Arnold’s valor, New York militia officer John Watts de Peyster commissioned a sculpture in the 1880s. The 4-foot-tall marble slab, also known as the Boot Monument, features a boot and a two-star epaulet—to signify Arnold’s major general rank—atop a howitzer barrel. An inscription cites an unnamed “most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army who was desperately wounded on this spot.”
“De Peyster and the Saratoga Monument Association clearly intended to honor Arnold’s accomplishments at Saratoga rather than Arnold the future traitor, leading to the monument’s distinctive design and inscription,” says Garrett Cloer, program manager for interpretation at Saratoga National Historical Park.
In February 1779, Kentucky militia colonel George Rogers Clark led his men on an 18-day trek across an icy landscape to wrest control of British-occupied Fort Sackville in modern-day southwestern Indiana. Clark’s maneuverings neutralized British military activity in the area and paved the way for the U.S. acquisition of land west of the Appalachian Mountains—territory that his younger brother, William, would traverse as part of the Corps of Discovery expedition in the early 19th century.
The elder Clark’s return to the limelight came with the dedication of the George Rogers Clark Memorial in June 1936. A Greek Revival-style circular structure, the granite memorial stands over 80 feet tall and features a statue and murals of its namesake in the interior, all serving as a reminder that the struggle for American independence was also waged beyond the familiar contours of the original colonies.
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Tim Ott has written for HISTORY.com and other A+E sites since 2012. He has also contributed to sites including MLB.com and Optimism, and teaches writing in his adopted hometown of Fort Lee, New Jersey.
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