ca. 1916
Manhattan: Madison Avenue - 26th Street (East)
Diana, goddess of the tower of Madison Square Garden, Madison Avenue, east side, and Fourth Avenue, west side, from 26th to 27th Streets, showing also a detail of the tower. Diana took possession of the tower in 1893, and for thirty-two years reigned as the undisputed queen of the New York skyline. Her predecessor was a larger Diana, placed on the tower in 1890. Both Dianas were gifts of the sculptor, whose expenses were paid by Stanford White personally. The first Diana proved to be much too large. She was not an ornament for the tower; rather, the tower became her pedestal. She was removed in 1892, and sent to Chicago for the World's Fair. There she remained until five years later, when she was partially destroyed by fire. It is believed that she is still in existence. Meanwhile, St. Gaudens had made another Diana, again receiving nothing but his expenses, which Stanford White again paid. The two Dianas were the only nude figures ever created by St. Gaudens. The new goddess was smaller and more graceful than the first. Like the first she turned with the wind, her flowing drapes acting as the sail of a weathervane. It is thus that we see her now, about twenty-three years since she first leveled her unsped arrow, with about nine years left of her reign. The picture clearly shows the beauty and grace of Diana; it does not catch the loveliness of her face, with its wistful expression. During the war Diana's drapes were removed, and she turned no more. From then on her arrow menaced the north alone; but she was careful never to release it. At last, in 1925, the New York Life Insurance Company, which had in 1915 acquired title to the Garden by foreclosure, decided to demolish the beautiful old building (old being used in its New York sense), and to replace it with their own structure. On May 6, 1925, Diana left her tower, and demolition work began. Many collectors offered to buy Diana from the New York Life; but that concern was unwilling to let her pass into private hands, and doubted its ethical right to sell a great masterpiece of art for which it had paid nothing. She was given to New York University on condition that her tower be re-erected on the campus at University Heights. This condition the University was unable to meet. Finally in 1932, she was given to the Pennsylvania State Museum and placed in Fairmont Park, Philadelphia. New Yorkers may see their former goddess there; or they may admire her loveliness in a smaller reproduction in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. About 1916. Ewing Galloway.
Photo from the New York Public Library - Milstein Collection
