FREEING THE ANGEL FROM THE STONE

Part Two: Photo Galleries 

 The Bronx

 PICTURE: MOTHER AND CHILD

   In Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx  are a number of  sculptures by Attilio Piccirilli.  The first one  called Mother and Child  is a copy of part of The Maine Monument. The sculpture shows a grieving mother and  child. It originally marked the grave of Barbara Giorgi Piccirilli mother of the Piccirilli family and her husband Giuseppe. The sculpture, an uninscribed marker, is the only indication that this is the site of sixteen burials of at least three generations of the Piccirilli family.  There are at least two more sculptures by Attilio Piccirilli in Woodlawn Cemetery. One is powerful and emotionally affective. The second, simpler in conception, is less powerful as sculpture, but its story still saddens many.    PICTURE: THE OUTCAST  

      First is the grave of Ensign Nathan Piccirilli, son of Orazio Piccirilli and his wife Angelina who are also buried here. Their son was killed in World War II at the Battle of Ormac Bay in the Philippine Islands. Attilio Piccirilli died less than a year after his nephew. The Outcast is a powerfully evocative sculpture of a young man clutching himself in intense grief. It goes by many names: The Outcast, The Pariah and The Friendless Immigrant.           

      Not too far away from the Nathan Piccirilli grave is the burial place of the first wife and infant daughter of Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia who many consider New York City’s most colorful and greatest mayor. Attilio Piccirilli was one of a circle of close friends of the Little Flower (from his first name, Fiorello) and an early political supporter. In 1914 when LaGuardia was picked to run for Congress by the Republican Party he opened his election headquarters in a building owned by the Piccirilli family. Attilio Piccirilli campaigned for him and, “holding aloft a banner with LaGuardia’s name, led a parade of some twenty persons during a pouring rain on Fourth Street, where they were picked off by Tammany braves with vegetables, rotten eggs, and other campaign grapeshot.”   PICTURE: LAGUARDIA GRAVE

       La Guardia was described as "ecstatically" in his marriage and he, "who was enormously fond of children, lavished on his own child the love of a man who comes late to fatherhood ". But his joy was not to last. In 1921 both Thea and the baby were dead from tuberculosis. His grief was inconsolable. La Guardia  planned to be buried with him. To help him forget his sorrow and despair   La Guardia's friends arranged a trip to  Havana, Cuba. Attilio Piccirilli accompanied him. In his grief La Guardia conceived of the deaths of his wife and child as "victims of social murder." When asked by a reporter if he knew how to make better use of the city's money to improve New York City he excitedly replied, "Could I! Could I!--Say! First I would tear out about five square miles of filthy tenements, so that fewer would be infected with tuberculosis like that beautiful girl of mine, my wife, who died--and my baby...".  La Guardia expanded the city's social-welfare services, opened milk stations, and began slum clearance and low cost housing programs. 

Manhattan

INSERT PICTURE      The Maine Monument (1913), Attilio Piccirilli

    In 1913, the same year that the Firemen’s Memorial was put in place, the Maine Monument  was unveiled after an eleven year delay. It is Attilio’s most famous sculpture and a complex allegory. The Maine Monument is a memorial to the 260 men of the battleship Maine who died when the ship exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba and to the others who later died in Spanish-American War that followed.

  The long delay in placing the monument, was the result of a personality clash between publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer as well as by Hearst’s feud with the ruling Democratic boss of Tammany Hall, Charles Murphy. Problems with committees, commissions and other interested parties added to the confusion.        

INSERT PICTURE     Mother Comforting Her Child, Maine Monument. Attilio Piccirilli

     The mother comforting her child is called Fortitude. As mentioned before, a similar sculpture marks the grave of the Piccirilli family at Woodlawn Cemetery.  Attilio called the grave marker Mater Amorosa. A copy of it is noted as being in the William Randolph Hearst Collection in San Simeon, California where it is called Mater Consolatrix and we have just seen another version of the mother and child at the Firemens’ Memorial. Piccirilli’s use and reuse of the mother and child theme is thought to be because his mother and Piccirilli children

The gilded Columbia Triumphant atop the monument, an allegorical group symbolic of victory, it is said to have been made from cannons recovered from the battleship Maine.

47^th  Street, where Broadway and Seventh Avenue meet. The site was selected in 1902 but in 1906, when Attilio Piccirilli finally completed his sculptures, it was discovered that a most unusual “clerical oversight” had occurred. The clerk whose job it was to record the original site had not done so and it had been given over to another use. A comfort station had been built on the original site. A new site had to be found. The present one was approved in 1910

style is best described as modern classicism.

Riverside Church
490 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10027
(122nd Street & Riverside Drive)

Saint Barthlomew's Church
Park Avenue & E 50th and 51st Streets

Brooklyn

Queens

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