Plinth Tours Riverside Park

by Katie Casanta
ICAA Fellow & Plinth Co-Founder

Plinth met on September 30, 2012 for a walking and sketching tour of Riverside Park in Manhattan. We met in the early afternoon at Grant’s Tomb at 125^th Street (1897, John Hemenway Duncan) and took some time to sketch the Greek Doric mausoleum. After sketching for 45 minutes, we made our way south and briefly stopped at a few of the many statues in the park including the memorials to Lajos Kossuth, Samuel Jones Tilden and Franz Siegel. We spent some time admiring Attilio Piccirilli’s Firemen’s Memorial at 100^th stop, and received a brief history lesson on Nicholas Roerich and the quirky art deco apartment building, the Master Apartments (1929, Harvey Wiley Corbett), constructed to house a museum dedicated to Roerich’s work and the art school he founded, the Master Institute of United Arts. At that point the weather – intermittent rain showers – was not terribly conducive to sketching, but we persevered on our tour, making our way down to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Monument (1902, Charles and Arthur Stoughton) at 89^th Street. We finished off the afternoon with conversation over burgers and beers overlooking the Hudson River at the 79^th Street Boat Basin (1937, Gilmore David Clarke) – one of finest interventions in Manhattan under Robert Moses’ tenure as Parks Commissioner.

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