Brooklyn Public Monuments

Brooklyn, New York has forty-three major public monuments, one of America's finest collections of outdoor sculptures. This guide provides photographs, descriptions and directions for finding the monuments. Most of the monuments are in public parks. Three are World War I regimental memorials at former armories. The Mowgli Bas-reliefs are in the Prospect Park Zoo. The monuments are an enduring expression of Brooklyn's art-loving culture. Six were commissioned by the City of Brooklyn, the most monuments with sculptures commissioned by any nineteenth-century city in the United States. The Brooklyn commissions are some of the finest examples of American figurative sculpture. Seven other monuments are major works by America's ablest sculptors - Henry Kirke Brown, John Quincy Adams Ward, Daniel Chester French, Frederick William MacMonnies, Henry Merwin Shrady, Charles Cary Rumsey, and Augustus Lukeman. Elmer Sprague grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska where Lee Lawrie's sculptures on the state capitol dominate the city. They started Sprague on his long-time hobby of sculpture watching. On retiring from teaching philosophy at Brooklyn College, he worked for several years as a volunteer archivist in the New York City Parks Department helping to develop the database that describes New York City's public monuments. Sprague has also spent many happy days visiting, photographing and researching the Borough of Brooklyn's public monuments. He writes about them to make them better known and to enlist public support for their continued conservation and preservation.