The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch: America's First Triumphal Arch

The Gothic brownstone arch at the entrance to Bushnell Park was dedicated on September seventeenth, eighteen eighty-six, the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, to honor the four thousand Hartford citizens who served in the Civil War and the four hundred who did not come home. What the dedication crowds may not have fully appreciated was that it was also the first permanent triumphal arch memorial in the United States, predating the Washington Square arch in New York and the arches at Gettysburg and Yellowstone. The architect was George Keller, a Hartford native who won the commission in eighteen eighty-four after earlier competition submissions were rejected.

He built it from Portland brownstone, with terra cotta friezes positioned forty feet above the road, each frieze seven feet high, telling alternating scenes of conflict and peace. Six sculpted figures, each eight feet tall, represent the civilians who sustained the war effort: a farmer, a blacksmith, a mason, a student, a carpenter, and an African American man breaking the chains of bondage. That last figure carries its own history.

A bronze plaque beneath the freed slave honors the one hundred twenty-eight African American residents of Hartford who fought for the Union. That plaque was added in nineteen eighty-seven, after a seventh-grade student named Airron Bethea wrote an essay for the arch's rededication arguing that their service deserved recognition. George Keller died in nineteen thirty-five.

His ashes are buried in the east tower of the arch he designed, alongside those of his wife. The memorial is, in the most literal sense, his monument.