Chester Alan Arthur

This monumental bronze portrait of Chester Alan Arthur, the 21st US President. This statue was commissioned by the friends of Arthur at a cost of $25,000. The ornamental base of polished black Barre granite was designed by James Brown Lord. The sculpture depicts Arthur standing in a frock coat before an armchair, draped with a rug, and embossed on the back with the presidential seal. Bissell, who studied art in Paris, Rome and Florence, was a prolific sculptor, and operated a marble business in Poughkeepsie, New York. He also sculpted the portrait of mayor Abraham de Peyster, formerly in Bowling Green Park, and now in Hanover Square in lower Manhattan. The Arthur sculpture was repatined by the city monuments crew in 1968, and was conserved again in 1986-87. Sculptures of Arthur’s contemporaries, Roscoe Conkling (1893) and Secretary of State William Seward (1876) may be found at the southeast and southwest corners respectively of Madison Square Park, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ fine effigy of Admiral Farragut (1881) stands vigilant on the northern side of the park’s central axis.

Inscription: 1a) Integral plinth, front: [signed] Geo. E. Bissell Sculptor 1898

1b) Integral plinth, rear: The Henry-Bonnard Bronze Co. Founders New York

2a) Pedestal, front: Chester Alan Authur Twenty-First President of the United States of America

2b) Pedestal: James Brown Lord Architect