General Sherman
<googlemap version="0.9" lat="40.76534" lon="-73.973286" type="satellite" zoom="17" width="300"> 40.76486, -73.97305
</googlemap>William Tecumseh Sherman, Union Army general remembered for his devastating "march to the sea", from Atlanta to Savannah, during the US Civil War.
After his death in 1892, the famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens was commissioned by an independent citizens' group to do a sculpture of Sherman. The sculptor started work on the statue in 1897, working initially from a bust of the general which he had executed in 1888. Saint-Gaudens went through several versions of the statue before he was satisfied with its "forward sweep". The statue's preliminary model was exhibited in 1900 at the Paris Exposition, where it won a Grand Prix.
The statue itself was originally placed alongside the Central Park wall on Fifth Avenue, but the site was found to be too confining, and it was later moved to its present location in Grand Army Plaza, near the former Plaza Hotel, at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South. The statue's gilding suffered badly from air pollution over the years: it was re-gilded in the 1990's.
A mockery of this statue stands at the same spot in the Dark Manhattan dominated by the Lone Power; in that version, the horse has been replaced by a terrible eight-legged steed with a barren skull for a head, and the Lone One is the rider. (SYWTBAW)