Artist Jim Sanborn’s first public sculpture, the Patapsco River Project was created as part of the Baltimore Sculpture Symposium sponsored by the city and administered by the Department of Housing and Community Development during the summer of 1977. Four artists were commissioned to each create gateway pieces for the city. The only other surviving gateway piece from the symposium is the Atlantic Blue Roller Column by Dominick Cea on Russell Street.
This early work reveals Sanborn's long-standing interest in Mayan culture, the temples of Guatemala in particular. Abstract and horizontal, the work stands at the far edge of an open field directly fronting the Patapsco River, extending almost 80 feet along the water’s edge. Ten pyramidal shapes are aligned symmetrically, five on either side of an opening that contains a pool and allows a view of the river. In the pool, there is a grate made of aluminum. Light streams through the open space and is reflected on the grate and in the pool. Resting on top of the flattened pyramids made of concrete is one continuous lintel of weathering steel. The lintel carries four more pyramidal shapes, again symmetrically placed, two on each side of the central opening, and again flattened.
The Department of Housing and Community Development assisted the artists at every turn, providing honoraria, materials, equipment, and assistants. For Patapsco River Project, Curtis Steel contributed between 12,000 and 15,000 pounds of Mayari-R steel, the city contributed and poured the concrete, and Edward Renneburg & Sons sheared the steel for free. Sanborn estimates that it might have cost him $100,000 to assemble the piece independently. Since 1977, Sanborn's sculpture has been displayed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His best known commission is an enigmatic cryptographic sculpture, entitled Kryptos, that was unveiled at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia on November 3, 1990.
In 1977, the concrete was bright white, the steel was a beautiful velvety brown, and the grass was green and lush. Unfortunately, very little maintenance has taken place since the work was first installed and few people are aware of the work or Sanborn's national reputation. Despite the neglect, the silhouette of the piece was and still is impressive today.
The Billie Holiday Monument on Pennsylvania Avenue commemorates the life and legacy of the famed "Lady Day" who was born as Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore on April 7, 1915.
Billie Holiday's childhood was difficult. Both of her parents were teenagers when she was born. In 1925, a ten-year-old Holiday was raped by an older neighbor and was sent to The House of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic penal institution (sometimes known as a "reform school") for Black girls. Holiday was held there for two years. After her release in 1927, she moved to New York City with her mother.
As a teenager, Billie began singing for tips in bars and brothels but soon found opportunities to sing with accomplished jazz musicians including Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie. She returned to Baltimore as a touring musician playing at clubs and restaurants along Pennsylvania Avenue. Unfortunately, after struggles with addiction and a sustained campaign of harassment by law enforcement, Holiday died on July 17, 1959 at age 44 and was buried in an unmarked grave at St. Raymond's Cemetery in New York City.
Planning for a statue in Baltimore began around 1971 as part of the urban renewal redevelopment of Pennsylvania Avenue and the surrounding Upton neighborhood. The original plans included both a statue and a drug treatment center in Holiday's honor but while plans for the center were dropped the Upton Planning Council continued to push for the sculpture.
In 1977, Baltimore commissioned thirty-seven-year-old Black sculptor James Earl Reid to design the monument. A North Carolina native, Reid recieved a master’s degree in sculpture from the University of Maryland College Park in 1970 and stayed at the school as a professor. Unfortunately, by 1983, rising costs of materials due to inflation led to a legal dispute between Reid and the city over payment and delays. The $113,000 eight-foot six-inch high bronze sculpture was unveiled on top of a cement pedestal in 1985 but Reid skipped the ceremony.
Reid's original vision was finally realized in July 2009 when the city found $76,000 to replace the simple pedastal with 20,000-pound solid granite base with incised text and sculptural panels. Inspired by one of Holliday's most famous performances, the haunting anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit," one of the two panels depicts a lynching. The other, inspired by the song "God Bless the Child," includes the image of a black child with an umbilical cord still attached in a visual reference to the rope used in the hanging. At the re-dedication in 2009, Reid celebrated the completion of the work and the life of Billie Holliday explaining, "She gave such a rich credibility to the experiences of black people and the black artist."
Watch on this statue!
One of the most striking monuments related to the Battle of Baltimore is the nearly forty-foot tall statue of the Greek god Orpheus greeting visitors to Fort McHenry since 1922. Dedicated to Francis Scott Key as well as the Old Defenders, the sculpture takes a more allegorical approach than monuments to others involved in the Battle of Baltimore.
The U.S. Congress appropriated $75,000 for a sculpture at this site in 1914 to mark the centennial of the Star-Spangled Banner-though the song did not become the national anthem until 1931. The Fine Arts Commission hosted a national contest to select the design, with Charles Niehaus' twenty-four-foot depiction of the Greek god of music and poetry selected as the most fitting memorial to Key. The bronze statue of a nude Orpheus playing the lyre stands atop a white marble base fifteen feet high. The low relief frieze on the base include a likeness of Key as well as other figures from mythology.
World War I delayed the project for a eight years. President Warren G. Harding dedicated the monument on Flag Day in 1922 with a live broadcast from WEAR—the first time a president had been heard on the radio. Congress paid Niehaus $33,121 (above the original appropriation) for Orpheus with the Awkward Foot.
Fort McHenry continued to serve as a military installation into the twentieth century. The Fort was briefly used as a city park from 1914 to 1917, when it returned to federal service as General Hospital No. 2 around World War I. When President Harding visited the Fort to dedicate the monument, the buildings had grown increasingly dilapidated. The Baltimore News American described the contrast between the empty fort and the new statue in August 1924:
"Deserted barracks and shacks gradually sink into ruin and weeds flourish where a great American victory of arms was won in the War of 1812. A movement is gaining headway to restore the ancient fort and transform it into a Federal park, worthy of its traditions and sightly to the tourists who come from distant places to visit the spot where a brilliant chapter of American history was written."
The movement to restore the fort, with vocal support from locals in Baltimore, successfully reinvigorated the site. President Calvin Coolidge signed legislation in 1925 preserving Fort McHenry as a national park under the War Department--the first national park related to the War of 1812. Baltimoreans and visitors could stroll the grounds, walk along the water, and access this historic site freely once again. The National Park Service assumed stewardship in 1933.
Six years later, the fort became the only NPS site with the dual designation of National Monument and Historic Shrine. Park service officials sought to distinguish historic sites of military importance with expansive natural landscapes in the west by using the categories of "National Monument" and "National Park." Outspoken locals pushed for the inclusion of "Historic Shrine" as it described the fort as a place of inspiration (for Key). James Hancock, President of the Society of the War of 1812, explained his position in a 1938 letter to Congressman Stephen Gambrill. The Fort, he argued, was "a distinctly historical place where people can go to review and renew those patriotic impulses that had much to do in making the national character."
The defense of Baltimore took place both on land, at North Point, as well as by sea at Fort McHenry. However, interest in the Star-Spangled Banner story in the twentieth century—embodied by Orpheus—came at the expense of North Point. Decades of federal resources have focused public attention to the Battle of Baltimore on Fort McHenry.