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City Beautiful Movement in the Progressive Age
By Camille Avena
The City Beautiful Movement (1900-1920) emerged as a response to the urbanization and the industrialization of the United States. Many of those involved in the City Beautiful Movement believed “that orderly planning and a comprehensive system of design were needed to produce beautiful and well-run cities”[1]. The belief that the city needed a plan for development was an essentially progressive idea – it was thought the planned city would be less poverty-prone. The entire movement was seen as a way to implement socioeconomic changes in New York City such as the elimination of overcrowding, poverty, prostitution, and corruption in government[2]. City Beautiful advocates and progressive reformers called for the creation of municipal art in New York City in the hopes that such a plan would instill an appreciation of history and a sense of morality in all citizens, especially immigrants. This is goal was shared by the commission of the Henry Hudson-Robert Fulton Celebration of 1909.
History of Art Organizations
The National Sculpture Society was formed by group of professional artists who would set the aesthetic standards of the time. According to Frederick Wellington Ruckstull, co-founder and the first secretary of the National Sculpture Society, the idea for the organization started in a Parisian café in 1887. With the help of Yale art critic Charles De Kay, Ruckstull’s concept became a reality. On May 30, 1893, a group of sculptors, critics, architects, and businessmen joined together to form the Sculpture Society, which was later changed to the National Sculpture Society. John Quincy Adams Ward was appointed as the first president of NSS. Ward had ties to important political and business officials which would aid the progress of the National Sculpture Society. The purposes of the society “were to standardize procedures for competitions, to enhance the professional status of sculptors, and to promote commissions for American sculpture in homes, public buildings, parks, and squares”[3].
The Municipal Art Society and Fine Arts Federation were two groups that made it possible for City Beautiful Movement to exist. The Municipal Art Society (MAS) was established on May 22, 1893 by architect Richard Morris Hunt and others as an organization devoted to the beautification of New York City. The Municipal Art Society (MAS) hoped to decorate the city with monuments and also to create useful structures for its inhabitants – such as lighting fixtures, fire alarms, and signs. In 1898, MAS came up with a City Beautiful plan. Influential men such as Congressman Olivier Belmont, Manhattan borough president Jacob A. Cantor, businessmen Andrew Carnegie, Henry Marquand, and Jacob Schiff supported the plan. The society was soon granted $10,000 from the municipal government to decorate the ceiling of City Hall. This was the first of many instances in which the city would sponsor public works of art. The Fine Arts Federation was a broader group that pulled members who were already in art organizations like the Architectural League of New York, the American Water Color Society, the National Society of Mural Painters, the Municipal Art Society, and the National Sculpture Society. The purpose of the Fine Arts Federation was to promote action by all of the artistic organizations and to protect the artistic interests of the community. The Fine Arts Federation became the intermediary between artistic groups and the city government[4]. This group would support the involvement of artists in a city plan.
The establishment of Greater New York gave the Fine Arts Federation an opportunity to receive an art commission. As of January 1898, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens joined Manhattan and the Bronx in becoming New York City. This resulted in the need for a new charter for New York City. Architect John M. Carrere, believing that New York needed increased “supervision not only of works of art, but of all those features including buildings, that would affect the city’s avenues, parks, and squares”[5], drafted a charter article which included the creation of the Art Commission. A committee was formed to propose this article supported by the Fine Arts Federation. The charter article was granted the right to be included in the New York City charter[6]. The presence of prominent men such as politician Seth Low and lawyer Elihu Root helped the approval of the charter article.
The New York Art Commission reserved the right to decide which works of art would be located on city property. By 1901, its authority was extended over all public buildings costing over one million dollars and eventually to all public buildings. The Art Commission included ten members: the mayor, the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the president of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the president of the New York Public Library, a painter, a sculptor, an architect, and three laymen. The six latter members were chosen by the mayor from a list provided by the Fine Arts Federation[7].
In 1901, Seth Low became mayor of New York City and it was now time for the City Beautiful Movement to act. Low and Manhattan borough president Jacob Cantor were members of the Municipal Art Society and were both supporters of the City Beautiful Movement. Low established the New City Public Improvement Commission but left the appointment of its members up to the next mayor, George B. McClellan. McClellan appointed prominent sculptor and City Beautiful advocate, Daniel Chester French to be on the commission. French was able to promote the prominence of public sculptures. Although the city never adopted an official “City Beautiful plan”, numerous civic monuments and sculptures were in the first third of the twentieth-century[8]. Although most artists were trying to advance their own agendas and their need for work, the City Beautiful Movement tied in with the development of the worldly city image of New York.
City Beautiful Movement & Progressive Beliefs
Progressive reformers and advocates of the City Beautiful Movement supported urban planning in the cities of the United States. Urban planning issues included tenement structure repairs, street repairs, transportation, and the aesthetic appeal of the city. In order to achieve the status of a “world city”, New York needed to have a detailed urban plan which would attract foreign attention. The aesthetic appeal of any city is extremely important in the construction of a “city image”. As the tenement areas of the city were being reformed, progressives also wanted the entire city to be “beautified” by sculptures that would help foster a civic identity for the immigrant population. Thus, the plans of the City Beautiful Movement were adopted and supported by Progressive reformers.
Under the City Beautiful plan, every city would have wide boulevards lined with trees, grand vistas, and a park system – similar to the Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (see below), whichinspired the City Beautiful Movement. Also, monuments and sculptures would be an essential part of the city. As sculptor Jonathan Scott Hartley said, “sculpture and architecture are twins . . .from the earliest times the two arts have always been intimately connected with each other”[9]. The idea that sculpture could civilize a group of people was shared by City Beautiful advocates and progressive reformers. Therefore, the City Beautiful movement became a “sub-movement” of the progressive movement.
The City Beautiful plan was meant to teach citizens and immigrants aesthetic standards and moral values. Many progressive reformers believed that poor neighborhoods of New York City, home to the new immigrant, were areas of immorality. The notion that their culture was inferior to the American culture was prevalent and thus, they needed to be “Americanized”. The Progressive Era also shared common ground with the City Beautiful Movement in their goal to moralize the immigrants of New York City. Both movements considered immorality as a disease that could spread throughout the entire city. The elimination of immorality could bring about the eventual elimination of poverty. Visual history would complement the history of New York taught in public schools in the early twentieth-century and, together they could create a “New York identity” for new immigrants[10].
Public Sculpture in Context – The Henry Hudson and Robert Fulton Celebration of 1909
The commission of The Henry Hudson and Robert Fulton Celebration of 1909 used public sculpture and monuments to not only honor the accomplishments of Hudson and Fulton but as a means to create a visual history of New York City. These images were intended to cross the language barrier that hindered so many immigrants from understanding the city’s history. Of course, monuments were dedicated to Hudson and Fulton themselves, in order to reinforce the significance of these men as human representations of bravery, ingenuity, and strength.
During the celebrations, ceremonies were commerorating monuments and the history they represented. Corresponding to the intent of the City Beautiful Movement, monuments that recreated and replicated history were useful in the creation of a civic identity. The monuments introduced a stories that could be adopted and passed down as a “common history”. It is this idea of a common history that can project unity on a group of diverse people. The Henry Hudson and Robert Fulton celebration projected the “common history” of the discovery and history of New York.
Public Sculpture in Context – The New York Public Library
In 1895, the Astor and Lenox libraries in Manhattan joined with the Tilden Trust (the fortunes from former governor of New York Samuel J. Tilden) to create the New York Public Library. This library would be the first one in New York City opened to the general public – this was especially important to the development of a well-read and cultured population. Due to the extensive collections of the library and the large endowments it received, the library was able to attain a central location in New York City – on 40th to 42nd street between 5th and 6th avenues[11].
The exterior façade, completed by 1900, consisted of three main arches protruding in the center and a series of smaller arches on the right and left sides. Above the three main arches were built an entablature and on the right-most and left-most arches were pediments. On either sides of the library the infamous lions were erected by sculptor Edward Clark Potter. The library façade was all designed by the firm Carrere and Hastings, the same firm which appointed George Grey Barnard, Paul Wayland Bartlett, Frederick MacMonnies, and Edward Clark Potter to work on the library. Due to the lack of public sculpture funding during the democratic rule of Mayor George B. McClellan, the sculpture portion of the New York Public Library was postponed due to this lack of funding. In 1908, the firm of Norcross Brothers won the right to design the sculptures for the library. According to the contract approved by The Park Development and the Board of Estimate, the Norcross Brothers subcontracted sculptors Bartlett, MacMonnies, and Barnard[12].
The New York Public Library (right) opened on May 23, 1911, however the sculptures Poetry, Drama, and History by Paul Wayland Bartlett were not completed at the time. At a time when reformers were stressed the importance of education as a way to eliminate delinquency, the building of a huge library incorporated progressive ideals[13] (180). The opening of the first public library in New York City would pave the way for future libraries throughout Greater New York. The entire City Beautiful Movement, although never officially established in New York, left its mark in the construction of public monuments and buildings. Both the progressive movement and the City Beautiful Movement emphasized the need for city planning and the development of a moral society.
The construction of public library certified the city’s value in a cultured and well rounded education. It elevated New York’s presence as a metropolitan city – a city that had the money to create a monumental building such as the library. The City Beautiful Movement and the city came together with the common goal of the creation of a cosmopolitan and aesthetically pleasing city.
Endnotes
[1]Michele H. Bogart, Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930 (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1994), 56.
[2]Ibid, 56-7.
[3]Ibid, 50-1.
[4]Ibid, 60-1.
[5] Ibid, 67.
[6] Ibid, 66-7.
[7] Ibid, 68.
[8] Ibid, 69-70.
[9] Ibid, 57-58.
[10] Arthur Colt Holden. The Settlement Idea: A Vision of Social Justice. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), 40-60.
[11] Michele H. Bogart, Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930 (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1994), 177.
[12] Ibid, 177-8.
[13] Ibid, 180.
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