Cadman Plaza Park & Brooklyn War Memorial

This monument, located on the northern part of Cadman Plaza near the Brooklyn Bridge approach, honors William Jay Gaynor (1851–1913), journalist, lawyer, state supreme court justice, Brooklyn resident, and mayor of New York from 1910 to 1913. The Gaynor Memorial Committee commissioned German-born sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) to create the bust of Gaynor flanked by a pair of allegorical bas-reliefs representing law and strength on one side and knowledge and ease on the other. The piece was dedicated in 1926.

The inscription, “Ours is a government of laws not men,” describes Gaynor’s anti-corruption, pro-reform style. Although helped into office by Tammany Hall, which was known for its patronage politics, Gaynor chose not to pay back the political machine with coveted political appointments; instead he assembled a pro-reform government that worked to streamline New York’s bloated civil service system. This cost Gaynor politically; he was the target of an assassination attempt in 1910 and lost the support of Tammany Hall. With the support of a coalition of pro-reform interests, Gaynor pushed for re-election. He became ill during the campaign and died in 1913.

Sculptor Weinman also modeled the bronze ornamentation for the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument (1908) in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park, the portrait bust of John Purroy Mitchel in Manhattan’s Central Park (1928), and the statue of Civic Fame (1914) crowning Manhattan’s Municipal Building, his best-known work.