Lafayette in Brooklyn: The Frenchman Who Fought for Freedom

This monument in Brooklyn honors Marie-Joseph Paul de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who crossed the Atlantic as a teenager to fight beside George Washington. Lafayette arrived in America in seventeen seventy-seven at the age of nineteen, funded the campaign partly from his own fortune, and was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He proved so effective as a commander that Washington trusted him with independent operations in Virginia during the war's final campaigns.

When Lafayette returned to the United States in eighteen twenty-four as the nation's guest, and the country greeted him as a living symbol of the alliance that had made independence possible. The Brooklyn monument was erected in nineteen seventeen and presented to the city by Henry Harteau, a private citizen, as a tribute to the man he called a friend and companion of the immortal Washington.