Exploration Yields Great Americans, Great American Beards

Riding downtown along the elevated 1 line from 242nd Street, one looks out on a city of train yards, graffiti, and auto shops. Here, past Washington Heights in a part of New York that seems to lack a label, the confluence of rivers, roads, and railways creates a daunting and chaotic spectacle. At the 207th Street station, disembark and face east across the Harlem River toward the Bronx.

There, atop heights of patchwork grays and browns, an unexpected cluster of collegiate buildings proudly overlooks the river. Cross the river and follow Fordham Road to Hampden Place. Near the street’s end, ascend a ramshackle stone staircase through the University Woods. There, at the top of the crumbling stairway, lies the base of the domed neoclassical building that can be seen from the elevated tracks in Manhattan. The gates to one of New York’s long forgotten monuments rest just beyond there, near the top of the hill.

Today, the sign at the campus entrance at University Heights reads Bronx Community College, but until 1973, the handsome complex designed by Stanford White housed none other than New York University. While NYU has always maintained property downtown, in 1894, then-Chancellor Henry Mitchell McCracken spearheaded New York University’s expansion to the Bronx. Around this time, many universities in search of space, including Columbia, were following the city’s northward trend of development. Today, Columbia’s campus stands as an architectural monument. The old New York University campus, though designed by the same firm in a similar style and layout, is all but forgotten. Sold to the city to escape bankruptcy in the 1970s, NYU’s abandoned uptown campus possesses an eerily bizarre resemblance to Columbia, both in its prominent domed library and in its adjacent halls (including one Havemeyer Hall to the south). Yet tucked behind the three main buildings lies the site’s most distinctive attraction—the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.

An open-air neoclassical colonnade lined by 98 bronze busts, the Hall of Fame mixes the poetic, the proud, and the absurd. Here, in a borough once emblematic of urban crime and decay, one can stand before the gazes of historical titans in a silence and serenity seldom experienced in New York. Few, if any, visitors walk beneath the vaulted ceilings most days. Nestled behind the campus’ historic center, renowned scientists, soldiers, statesmen, authors, teachers, and jurists rest in eternal contemplation. But in the hall’s strange quietude, one may find awe and admiration joined at times by humor and surprise.

While the Hall of Fame’s 98 busts include mostly familiar faces like Lincoln, Thoreau, and Edison, an unpredictable few depict Americans whose legacies have largely faded from the public consciousness. Matthew Fontaine Maury, “Pathfinder of the Seas,” and Gil Charles Stuart, George Washington’s portrait painter, are two likely to draw their share of blank stares.

Inaugurated in 1900, the Hall of Fame enshrined 29 members in its first induction. Elections continued until 1976, when private donations waned after New York University left the uptown campus. The busts of the final four inductees—Andrew Carnegie, Louis Brandeis, Luther Burbank, and Clara Barton—were never completed, resulting in four empty spaces along the arcade. Others, whom one might today consider clear choices for the memorial, such as Henry Ford, were nominated but never inducted. In many ways, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans represents a succession of moments in time past, a window into the psyche of earlier generations. Even Jefferson Davis once came close to induction, albeit with significant lobbying from the Confederate Daughters of America.

Strolling among the bronze busts at the Hall of Fame for Great Americans is rather like walking through a lavish and exclusive dinner party frozen in time. The plaques beneath each bust bear famous quotations that seem to offer a series of toasts, after-dinner speeches, and haughty proclamations. While most are predictably epic and philosophical, a number boast odd or random statements, as if some of the invited guests had slightly overindulged in brandy before the distinguished gathering. The scientist Joseph Henry contests, perhaps rather indignantly, “I may say I was the first to bring the electro-magnet into the condition necessary to its use in telegraphy and also to point out its application to the telegraph.” Like Henry, others seem to tread against the fate of oblivion. The inventor and engineer James Buchanan Eads painfully comes to life as he groans, “I cannot die. I have not finished my work,” and then recedes back into his bronze prison. Grover Cleveland, the Gilded Age’s one lucky representative, unfortunately does not proclaim his legacy as the only president to be elected to two non-consecutive terms. Had Chester A. Arthur or Rutherford B. Hayes gained induction (of course, both were nominated), one can only imagine what they would have to say.

The Hall of Fame for Great Americans may not precisely embody the modern conception of American heroism, but the unknown and the unexpected, along with an impressive collection of beards, are what make this memorial distinctive. Here, with few interruptions, Ulysses S. Grant and Stonewall Jackson will engage in an eternal staring competition. Sidney Lanier, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman will forever scoff at the fashion of each other’s facial hair. Abraham Lincoln will always stare downcast at the floor, perhaps distraught by the induction of John Wilkes Booth’s brother Edwin, whose bust is surrounded by a legion of teachers and temperance workers in the ladies’ wing. Seldom visited and drowned in a tarnished brilliance, the bronze busts atop University Heights are waiting for the final four guests to their dinner party—but Andrew Carnegie, Louis Brandeis, Luther Burbank, and Clara Barton will never arrive.