The Thomas Paine Monument

DEFACED !

The engraving of the monument to Thomas Paine in New Rochelle, NY, the first monument to Paine in the world, depicts it as it looked shortly after erected in 1839 under the aegis of Paine biographer, publisher, educator, and reformer Gilbert Vale (1789 - 1866) through his journal, The Beacon (NY).

A bronze bust by the American sculptor James Wilson Alexander McDonald (August 25, 1824 - August 14, 1908) was added to the top at the culmination of the second of three “restorations” carried out on the monument in 1881, 1894-1899, and 1905. The sad truth is that “Americans” had marred and vandalized the marble over the years. Some were souvenir seekers; others were opposed to Thomas Paine and some mere vandals. Corners of the capital had been broken off and were smoothed out, etc. Some of the lettering in the inscription was re-chiseled. The bust was added as a monument to the event itself and to magnify Paine’s eminence. Here it is as it looks today:

There is good reason to question the rationale and propriety of the the addition of the bust to the monument. The bust itself would be better displayed on its own, closer to the viewer rather than twelve feet away. But more importantly, its placement conradicts - it might even be said that it insults - the intentions of the monument’s creators, Gilbert Vale and the political activist and architect who sculpted the cameo image on the column, John Frazee (July 18, 1790 – February 24, 1852). Both of them envisioned a clean and elegant Greek Revival column (see image at top). In an 1839 letter to Vale, Frazee described the monument as achieving a

”…chaste and beautiful structure. Its purely Grecian character and simplicity of form, render its general efect truly impressive and interesting.”
John Frazee to Gilbert Vale, NY, November 12, 1839
in Vale, G. The Life of Thomas Paine, NY: by the author (1840), p. 191.

Greek Revival architecture and other arts were the dominent style of the Federal Period (1780-1840), an expression of the Enlightenment Period republican ideas that had fueled the American Revolution. Frazee was an enthusiast of the style in both his architecture and sculpture. Readers who have visited New York City will recognize his best known work; built originally as the NY Customs House (completed three years after the Paine Monument in 1842) and now repurposed as the Federal Hall National Monument:

Then and now.

The same Neo-classical influence is seen at work in his sculptures:

John Lowell (1769-1840), Massachusetts jurist and president of the Boston Athenaem (1816-1819), by Frazee.

Gilbert Vale and John Frazee were acquainted through their joint membership in America’s earliest labor union movement, the Workinmen’s Party (est.1828). Both were reformers in education, the arts, sciences, equal rights, antislavery, and land reform. And in the latter, their involvment and friendship with George Henry Evans (1805-1856) eventually led to the Homestead Act signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862.

The addition of the 1899 bust by Wilson McDonald, plopped atop the Greek column of the Thomas Paine monument, is a violation of the integrity of the monument and of the intention of its creators, Gilbert Vale and John Frazee. .

We call upon the City of New Rochelle for the removal of the McDonald bust from the Thomas Paine Monument and we solicit the support of other interested persons or institutions who may share this goal.