Madison Square Park

The Admiral Farragut Monument at the north end of Madison Square Park is one of the finest outdoor monuments in New York City. Its creation was a collaboration of two of the finest artistic spirits of their age, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and architect Stanford White.

Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870), began his military career at age nine. He served as a midshipman on the frigate Essex during the War of 1812, and led campaigns against Caribbean-based pirates during the 1820s. He later fought in the Mexican War. At the outset of the Civil War, Farragut’s Union sympathies compelled him to move from Virginia to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He won lasting fame by wresting New Orleans from Confederate control. Then, against all odds, his troops defeated Confederate forces to take Mobile Bay where he uttered the immortal words: “Damn the torpedoes . . . full speed . . . ahead!”

These and other victories earned him the rank of Admiral in 1866, and he remained on active duty for life, one of only seven US Naval officers to achieve this distinction. When Farragut died in 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant attended his funeral in New York. He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

The Farragut Monument was dedicated in 1881 and was Saint-Gaudens’ first public commission. It depicts the resolute Admiral Farragut in full naval uniform, standing erect with binoculars in hand and sword at his side, as if engaged in commanding a fleet. White designed the semi-circular exedra on which the monument stands. Overtime the monument has been revered for its dynamic naturalism.

The Farragut Monument was conserved in 2002, as a project of the Municipal Art Society’s Adopt-A-Monument Program, in partnership with the Department of Parks & Recreation and the Art Commission of the City of New York. A generous grant from the Paul and Klara Porzelt Foundation made the restoration possible. The monument’s conservation coincided with the restoration of Madison Square and today this outstanding example of nineteenth-century American commemorative sculpture remains a commanding presence in this historic park.