One reader\u2019s question: Is the statue of Andrew Jackson in front of St. Louis Cathedral the first statue of a man on a horse on two legs?<\/p>\n
The French Quarter square, once under the French-era name Place d’Armes, had been renamed in Jackson\u2019s honor in 1851, a few years after Jackson\u2019s death, honoring his victory in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.<\/p>\n
The battle marked the last major conflict in the War of 1812, when a ragtag band of soldiers under then-General Jackson\u2019s command successfully fought off the British, defending the Crescent City.<\/p>\n
This battle was fought after the war had ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent; news hadn\u2019t reached troops that an agreement had been reached. While the war was over, the American victory helped cement a sense of patriotic pride for the young nation, both in the city and country at large.<\/p>\n
After neglect left the square desolate and surrounded by crumbling architecture in the 1840s, area revitalization led by Baroness de Pontalba in the early 1850s created new landscaping, building repairs and other renovation and improvements.<\/p>\n
Enter the landmark New Orleans sculpture, of Andrew Jackson astride his horse, installed in 1856, five years after the square\u2019s renaming and a few years into the beautification process. The statue features Jackson on a rearing horse, meant to invoke his address of troops before the Battle of 1812.<\/p>\n
The statue\u2019s inauguration ceremony had a large turnout by all accounts, with overflowing streets, bands playing music, and the governor in attendance, along with veterans holding up the original banner from the Chalmette battlefield.<\/p>\n
One newspaper account of the ceremony reads: \u201cNo man has ever earned for himself a dearer or more enduring place in the popular regard of our southern people, and the equestrian statue, the inauguration of which was yesterday witnessed amid so much of pomp and circumstance, is but the substantial embodiment of a people\u2019s gratitude, expressed in bronze and granite.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statue was created by sculptor Clark Mills, hailed as a feat of construction at the time. The mass of metal is balanced without any support, and has remained upright, weathering winds and hurricanes without falling.<\/p>\n
The statue has also endured countless members of the public \u2014 one crime report from two days after the statue\u2019s installation reported a drunken attempt by a German shoemaker named Otto to climb the pedestal and break off the statues\u2019 stirrups and spur. The man was arrested and fined $100 for the endeavor.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A 1934 story in the New Orleans States newspaper reported the decapitation of the statue of Andrew Jackson by Clark Mills<\/p>\n
(Photo by Doug MacCash, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)<\/p>\n
The statue isn’t original though; Mills created three other identical Jackson statues, found in Washington, D.C.; Nashville, Tennessee; and Jacksonville, Florida.<\/p>\n
The D.C. statue was the first of Mills\u2019 creations, and it did represent the first equestrian statue created by an American, as well as the first to be found anywhere that featured a horse standing on its rear legs without support, according to The Historic New Orleans Collection.<\/p>\n
New Orleans\u2019 statue, while the second one made, still managed to become a celebrated piece of local history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One reader\u2019s question: Is the statue of Andrew Jackson in front of St. Louis Cathedral the first statue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-871707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}