Spanish-American War Monument

By Hannah Marcano

On the afternoon of October 25, 1925, several thousand people assembled for the commemoration of the newly-erected Spanish-American War Monument in New Haven’s Edgewood Park.  National, state, and municipal authorities led the commemoration and paid tribute to the men who gave their lives in the conflict, reported the New Haven Evening Register.  There was to be a parade for the monument which would include “every military organization in the city,” but it was cancelled due to the rainy weather that day. The countless citizens that arrived, undeterred, were described to be “crowded into the armory in Meadow Street,” rather than at the monument itself.

The monument was made by Michel Martino, a local sculptor who worked on monuments and Works Progress Administration projects around the city, writes historian Laura Macaluso. The sculpture was cast by American Art Foundry located in New York. The statue depicts a heroic image of a soldier in combat, rifle in hand. Two bronze plaques were attached as a memorial to the battleship U.S.S. Maine, in memoriam to the ship destroyed in Havana Harbor in 1898 and which had presaged the American declaration of war.  The original tablets were cast from metal salvaged from the ship. The sculpture itself is made of bronze, while its base is of granite. The Smithsonian Art Inventory Catalog describes the statue’s appearance beautifully, “a life-sized figure of a Spanish-American War serviceman, stands facing east on a high granite pedestal. In full field uniform, he is striding forward with his proper right leg in front.”  The soldier can also be seen holding a rifle.

This monument is not the first of its kind. Macaluso refers to the monument as the “Spanish American War Memorial (The Hiker).” The New Haven monument was, in fact, one of many similar Hiker monuments around the country.  Dr. Sarah Beetham introduces this phenomenon in her dissertation, “Sculpting the Citizen Soldier: Reproduction and National Memory,” stating, “...the War of 1898 manifested itself in soldier monuments, especially in the Hiker monuments by Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson and Allen George Newman that were copied in so many locations across the United States.”  The New Haven Memorial was therefore one of many similar types of monuments in cities across the nation, and it appears to have been the inspiration for a similar monument in New Britain as well, according to a 1925 issue of the New Britain Herald.

In the 1970s, the monument’s plaques were stolen. The robbers were never caught, and the plaques were not replaced for decades. This would not ever have been resolved if it was not for the monument’s becoming a digital landmark in Pokemon GO.

A forum was created in 2014 on SeeClickFix’s website, in which someone asked what happened to the plaques and why they were not replaced. On the same day, another user confirmed that the plaques were stolen, and asked if anyone knew the text that was on the plaques. Due to a lack of interaction, the thread was closed. It was opened once again two years later with a sarcastic comment by user “BB,” who wrote, “I would like to reopen this one (thread) as it really should be fixed. Also, now it is a PokemonGO gym so it's much more important.” For more context, a Pokemon GO gym is a place in the real world where players can put their creatures up to battle those of other players for control of the area.

This sparked an influx of comments in search of information on restoring the plaques. Registered user "Ben" commented that the research being done by all involved was comparable to a “detective squad for New Haven history.” A year later, the citizens’ work finally paid off.  Their request was granted in 2017 after a link was posted to a New Haven Independent article with a fitting title, “Soldier Gets His Plaques Back.”  Those involved worked diligently to duplicate the plaques lost, called the “Maine Memorial Tablets.” Congress once ordered one thousand plaques distributed across the nation, including New Haven. The monument’s restoration team contacted a recommended art conservation company for access to a mold for the tablets. The replicas were then cast and replaced. The article provides a picture of the team that came to the monument's "second unveiling," which consisted of a mere seven people. It was raining once again, but that did not stop the commemoration this time.

Eventually, the monument’s brief, humble fanfare faded, and history repeated itself once more.  The monument can be seen today in Edgewood Park with its plaques intact, however, with the top of the soldier’s rifle broken clean off--the work, perhaps, for another New Haven history detective squad.

Figure 1:  The Spanish American War Monument as it appeared after the 1970s and before its 2017 plaque restoration, photo courtesy of Boret Lonh

Figure 2: The Spanish American War Monument with its plaques in-tact and a severed rifle, 2020 courtesy of the author

Bibliography

Beetham, Sarah Denver. “Sculpting the Citizen Soldier: Reproduction and National Memory,
1865-1917.” Dissertation, ProQuest LLC, 2014: 247.

Comments under ‘Soldier Gets His Plaques Back’ Article. New Haven Independent,
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Hegel, Richard.  “Veterans and War Memorials and Monuments in the City of New Haven,
Connecticut.”  Journal of the New Haven Colony Historical Society 37 (Spring 1991): 36.

Macaluso, Laura A. Story. In New Haven in World War I, 119–31. Charleston, SC: The History         Press, 2017: 119, 131.

Macaluso, Laura A.  The Public Artscape of New Haven: Themes in the Creation of a City
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https://ctstatelibrary.org/martino-michel/ (accessed 10/20/2020). 

Most Recent Photo of Monument’s Condition. November 2, 2020. Photograph. 

New Britain Herald, October 23, 1925.

New Haven Independent, November 9, 2017

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New Haven Register, October 26, 1925.

PathMaker (username). “Parks Request Forum: Restoring the Plaques on the Pedestal underneath
the Spanish-American War Monument.” SeeClickFix, June 14, 2014.
https://seeclickfix.com/issues/1124945-parks-request (accessed 11/9/2020).

Pelland, Dave. “Spanish-American War Monument, New Haven.” CT Monuments, December 5,
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Smithsonian American Art Museum. “United States Marine, (Sculpture).” Smithsonian
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https://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=129G1K368868I.45274
(accessed 10/20/2020). 

Texas State Preservation Board. “The Hiker/Spanish American War Monument.” SPB.

https://tspb.texas.gov/prop/tcg/tcg-monuments/06-spanish-american-war/index.html
(accessed 11/9/2020).