Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial, Philadelphia

Along the east bank of the Schuylkill River between Boathouse Row and the Girard Avenue Bridge sits a sculpture garden that took nearly fifty years to build. Ellen Phillips Samuel, a Philadelphia philanthropist, died in nineteen thirteen and left the bulk of her estate in trust to the city's art association, with one instruction: use the income to erect sculptures emblematic of the history of the United States. The association hired architect Paul Philippe Cret to design three connected terraces, and then held not one but three international sculpture competitions in nineteen thirty-three, nineteen forty, and nineteen forty-nine to select artists.

Seventeen sculptures were commissioned in all. The final piece was installed in nineteen sixty and the memorial was dedicated the following year. The works do not portray famous individuals but concepts and archetypes: the immigrant, the preacher, the laborer.

It is a portrait of American character in stone, assembled over three decades beside a river that rowing clubs have pulled across since the eighteen fifties.