Frederick Douglass Monument (Rochester, New York)

Frederick Douglass Monument (Rochester, New York)

Subject (Topic)
Antislavery movements--United States
Enslaved persons--Emancipation
Freedom
New York (State)--Rochester
Public art
Public sculpture

Subject (Name)
Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

Subject (Object Type)
Commemorative sculpture

Sculptor Stanley W. Edwards modeled Douglass with his shoulders back, feet planted squarely forward, and his arms outstretched with his palms open as if he were addressing an audience. Mounted on the statue's pedestal are four bronze plaques, three of which are inscribed with quotes from Frederick Douglass. This monument was originally located in front of the old New York Central Train Station (St. Paul Street and Central Avenue) in Rochester, New York. In 1941, the work was moved to Highland Bowl, a part of Highland Park, close to the location of Douglass' farm (no longer extant) on South Avenue. Photos of the monument were taken in Highland Bowl, Highland Park, Rochester, New York in 2018. In October 2019, the City of Rochester moved the monument to a newly designated Frederick Douglass Memorial Plaza at South Avenue and Robinson Drive.

Edwards, Stanley W.

Photographs by Renée Ater

June 9, 1899

George A. Benton; Charles R. Douglass; Hester C. Jeffrey; Benjamin Myers; Nathan P. Pond; Governor Theodore Roosevelt; Enoch R. Spalding; William A. Sutherland; Gertrude A. Thompson; John W. Thompson; John Van Voorhis

City of Rochester, Department of Environmental Services, 30 Church Street, Rochester, New York, 14614, United States

JPEG

English

Visual Arts-Sculpture

Frederick Douglass Memorial Plaza, South Avenue and Robinson Drive, Rochester, New York, 14620, United States

Bronze plaque (north):
Frederick Douglass

Bronze plaque (west):
“I know no soil better adapted to the growth of reform than American soil. I know of no country, where the conditions for effecting great changes in the settled order of things, for the development of right ideas of liberty and humanity are more favorable than here in these United States.” Extract from speech on Dred Scott Decision, delivered in New York, May 1857.

Bronze plaque (south):
“The best defense of free American institutions is the hearts of the American people themselves”.

“One with God is a majority.”

“I know no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity.”

Bronze plaque (east):
“Men do not live by bread alone; so with nations, they are not saved by art, but by honesty; not by the gilded splendors of wealth, but by the hidden treasures of manly virtue; not by the multitudinous gratification of the flesh, but by the celestial guidance of the spirit.” Extract from speech on The West India Emancipation, delivered at Canandaigua, N.Y., August 4, 1857

Statue: 96 in. (243.84 cm)
Pededstal: 108 in. (274.32 cm)

Bronze; Westerly blue granite

Haight, R. J. "Among the Sculptors." The Monumental News, vol. 10, no. 9 (1898): 516. Accessed May 25, 2020. https://books.google.com/books?id=qMQ4soroX0cC&pg=PA33&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Thompson, James W. An Authentic History of the Frederick Douglass Monument. Rochester, NY: Rochester Herald Press, 1903. Accessed May 25, 2020. https://www.libraryweb.org/~digitized/books/History_Douglass_Monument.pdf.

Greenwood, Marcia. "Original Frederick Douglass Statue Is on the Move." Democrat & Chronicle, October 21, 2019. Accessed May 25, 2020. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2019/10/21/frederick-douglass-statue-being-moved-out-highland-park-bowl-rochester-ny/4054831002/.

Renée Ater

Sculpture

Statue: 96 in. (243.84 cm)
Pededstal: 108 in. (274.32 cm)