British Garden at Hanover Square

This impressive bronze portrait statue, created by American sculptor George Edwin Bissell (1839-1920), depicts Mayor Abraham De Peyster (1657–1728). Born in New Amsterdam (now known as “Manhattan”), De Peyster came from a prosperous mercantile family. In his youth he spent nine years working on the family farm in the Netherlands, before returning in 1684 to New Amsterdam. He quickly ascended the City’s political ladder, occupying almost all of the important colonial offices, including alderman, mayor, member of the king’s council, and acting governor. De Peyster amassed great wealth, and by the end of his life he is said to have been one of the city’s wealthiest merchants.

In the late 19th century, John Watts De Peyster, Abraham’s great-great-great grandson, commissioned this statue. Bissell, whose family ran a marble company in Poughkeepsie, New York, sculpted the piece in his studio in Mount Vernon, New York, and cast the bronze at the E. Gruet foundry in Paris. He also sculpted the portrait of President Chester A. Arthur (1898) located in Madison Square Park, as well that of John Watts in Trinity Church cemetery. He depicted De Peyster, sporting a lavish cloak, wig, army boots, and sword in hand denoting his political and military roles in the colonial government.

The De Peyster sculpture was originally placed in the center of nearby Bowling Green Park in 1896, at a site once occupied by a statue of King George III. Vandalism to the statue prompted the resetting of the sword in 1939, and an overall conservation effort in 1942. In 1972, park and subway renovations at Bowling Green forced removal of the statue. It was relocated four years later on a new pink granite pedestal (on which the original inscriptions were transcribed) in Hanover Square. In 1999, the sculpture was conserved by the City Parks Foundation Monuments Conservation Program, with funding from the Florence Gould Foundation, the American Express Company, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

The sculpture has been removed from the park to accommodate the redesign of Hanover Square as the British Memorial Garden. It has been temporarily placed in storage until a new location has been determined for its reinstallation.

Updated Apr. 09, 2007