Confederate Monument in Louisville

Confederate Monument in Louisville
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
South view of monument
Location	Jct. of 2nd and 3rd Sts., Louisville, Kentucky
Coordinates
Built	1895
Architect	Ferdinand von Miller II
Architectural style	No Style Listed
MPS	Civil War Monuments of Kentucky MPS
NRHP Reference #	97000689
Added to NRHP	July 17, 1997

The Confederate Monument in Louisville is a 70-foot-tall monument adjacent to and surrounded by the University of Louisville Belknap Campus in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. The monument, the ownership of which is disputed, but generally believed owned by the city of Louisville, commemorates the sacrifice of Confederate veterans.

As with many monuments to the Confederacy, some community activists, such as Louisville's late Reverend Louis Coleman, have called for the removal of the monument from such a prominent location due to a perceived association with the history of civil rights abuses against African-Americans. In the past, both the city and university have opposed such proposals. In 2002, the University announced plans to add civil rights monuments around the statue as part of its redevelopment as "Freedom Park." Two million dollars of funding, principally for the park, was secured in late 2008.

In late April 2016, officials in Louisville announced plans to remove the monument to another location. Subsequently, a Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge signed a temporary restraining order filed by the Kentucky Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans but dissolved the restraining order at a later hearing in May 2016.

History

The idea for the monument was first conceived in the basement of the Walnut Street Baptist Church in May 1887 during discussion concerning the decoration of graves at Cave Hill Cemetery. The Kentucky Women's Confederate Monument Association was officially incorporated April, 1890 for the purpose of raising money for construction. From conception to completion, the organization grew from 17 to over 250 members. After several years of fund raising with picnics, plays and dinners, the monument was completed in summer 1895 at a cost of $12,000. However the monument committee continued to hold fund raisers over a year after the dedication to pay off the outstanding debt to the Muldoon Monument Company.

After some delay, the cornerstone was laid on May 25, 1895. Within the cornerstone was placed historical items including a mourning scarf, newspaper, poem and photographs, memoirs, Confederate currency, a Bible and a cigar of Jefferson Davis. The dedication was on July 30, 1895, in time to coincide with the 29th Grand Army of the Republic annual reunion later in September. The occasion began with a parade which started on Broadway and followed down 3rd street to the monument. The parade included 200 ex-Confederate soldiers following the band from the Industrial School of Reform. Basil W. Duke gave the principal speech. The only Confederate flag at the occasion was battle worn from the war and unfurled at the end of the event.

During the 1920s and 1940s there were plans to remove the monument for road construction, until public sentiment saved it. In fact, in 1947, Louisville Mayor Charles P. Farnsley, a fighter for civil rights, stood guard in front of the monument with a musket and made a public announcement on his wishes to keep the monument where it was. In 1954, Mayor Andrew Broaddus agreed to reduce the area around the monument from a 48 foot diameter circle to a smaller elliptic plot to ease traffic congestion and avoid moving the monument.

Freedom Park

The area presently occupied by the nearby University of Louisville was purchased in 1850 by the city for use as an underutilized cemetery. In 1859, the city transferred the land to the House of Refuge, an orphanage and reform school, also known as the Industrial School of Reform after 1886. As the first buildings neared completion, the Civil War broke out and the Union Army commandeered the buildings as hospitals until 1865. The University of Louisville purchased the property in 1923. The chapel of the House of Refuge was converted to The Belknap Playhouse by the University by 1925. In 1980, the Playhouse was rebuilt across the street at the north end of a triangle of land which includes the Confederate monument to the south.

In 2002, plans were conceived to integrate the monument and the Playhouse into the larger Freedom Park, with trees transplanted from Civil War battlefields. On 17 November 2008, funding was approved, with the Kentucky state government using $1.6 million of federal funds and the university spending $403,000. Louisville sculptor Ed Hamilton was selected to create a civil rights monument to balance the Confederate Monument; Hamilton had already created an Abraham Lincoln memorial statue in Louisville. In 2002, the late J. Blaine Hudson, at the time Chair of the Pan-African Studies Department at the University of Louisville, explained:

What we hope to do with Freedom Park is to put all the historical information on the table and develop an interpretation that reflects as accurately as possible the totality of the Civil War and the late Antebellum experience of this area.

— J. Blaine Hudson, 2002 Press Statement

September 2015, the park's name was changed to Charles H. Parrish Jr. Freedom Park. The name reflects the contributions of Dr. Parrish (1899-1989) as the University of Louisville's first African-American educator and Chair of the Sociology Department. At present, the park contains series of black granite obelisks detailing the history of Louisville as well as panels to commemorate the lives of community civil rights leaders.

Recent Controversy

File:Confederate Monument of Louisville, with construction.png

Base of Confederate Monument with fence and construction equipment, May 2016.

At a press conference, on April 29, 2016, the Mayor of Louisville Greg Fischer and University President James R. Ramsey explained their intention to immediately remove the monument and place it into storage where it would receive cleaning. They stated the monument would be reconstructed at a new location but the location had not yet been determined.

On 2 May 2016, a Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge signed a temporary restraining order filed by the Kentucky Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans along with several private individuals. The next day, the Jefferson County Attorney, representing the Mayor, asked for more time to prepare a defense for the intended monument removal. The Court granted an extension to May 25, 2016.

The plaintiffs contended that Mayor Fischer, by attempting removal of the monument, is violating state and federal preservation law. On Thursday May 5, 2016, the attorney for the plaintiffs amended the complaint arguing the monument does not belong to the City of Louisville nor the University. The revised complaint contended the monument belongs to the State of Kentucky as it is apart of the transportation right of way.

At a hearing on May 25, 2016, citing lack of evidence to issue an injunction, the Circuit Court Judge dissolved the temporary restraining order. The City of Louisville agreed to hold the removal until the Judge completes her written ruling.

Historic Status

A 2002 act of the General Assembly created the Kentucky Military Heritage Commission. The Commission oversees the protection of monuments and memorials in their registry. The Confederate monument is currently listed as a potential site.

The monument was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 17, 1997, one of sixty-one different Civil War-related sites in Kentucky so honored on the same day. Four other monuments are in Louisville/Jefferson County. The 32nd Indiana Monument and the Union Monument in Louisville were both in Cave Hill Cemetery, although the first is now at Louisville's Frazier History Museum to preserve it. John B. Castleman Monument is on Cherokee Circle in the Highlands, a block from Bardstown Road. The other, Confederate Martyrs Monument in Jeffersontown, is in Jeffersontown City Cemetery in Jeffersontown, Kentucky.

Description

The monument is located at the intersection of 2nd and 3rd Streets, immediately south of West Brandeis Avenue. It is built of granite, constructed by the Muldoon Monument Company, and includes three bronze Confederate soldiers designed by the sculptor Ferdinand von Miller II of Munich, Germany. The infantryman located at the top of the column is 95 inches tall, and in a relaxed position with his rifle. The east side artillerist is holding a ramrod with swab, and the west side cavalryman holds a partially unsheathed sword. "Our Confederate Dead, 1861-1865" and "Tribute to the Rank and File of the Armies of the South" are inscribed on the north and south face respectively. On the north face is a bronze medallion of the Great Seal of the Confederate States of America.

The monument base had a diameter of 48 feet in the early 20th century. The National Register of Historic Places nomination form describes four elaborate lamp standards that were placed at compass points as apart of a fence that once encircled the monument. In an early mention, the monument committee in 1897 proposed to write Frederick Law Olmsted, the park architect, to draw up plans for the structure. The constructed lamps were designed by Louisville sculptor Enid Yandell. By fall 1900, the Louisville city councilmen were arguing whether the cost to light the gas lanterns should be paid from private or city funds. Both the fence and lamps were removed for traffic considerations in the 1950's.

The monument committee initially chose the monument sculpture design of Enid Yandell as the best in an ostensibly blind competition in 1894. The Confederate Veteran magazine reported in November 1893:

She has opened a studio in New York, but hopes for her greatest patronage from the South. She is at present making studies for a magnificent Confederate monument, to be erected in one of our Southern States.

— Staff, Confederate Veteran

Yandell's proposed design was a female allegorical figure of 'Victory' rising 75 feet high on a pedestal of red granite. The public disclosure that the committee's choice was from a young woman caused a modest scandal. Concerns included the accusation that Yandell's friends on the monument committee had influenced the vote, the design should include a soldier, and ballot stuffing. As a result of the controversy, Yandell withdrew her design and the monument was constructed by the Muldoon Monument Company which had done well in balloting.

Muldoon constructed a similar monument, using von Miller's artwork, in 1895 at the State Capitol grounds in Raleigh, North Carolina. Constructed at a cost of $20,000, this monument was paid from a state appropriation rather than private donations. The length of the sheath belonging to the cavalryman at the Raleigh site indicates contemporary damage to the Louisville cast. Research published in 1956 by Justus Bier, at the time Chair of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Louisville, suggests the two lateral figures of both monuments were modeled by von Miller from photographs of W. R. Dicks, a Raleigh, North Carolina Confederate veteran. One of the uniforms was thought modeled from another Raleigh veteran, Thomas P. Devereux. The model for the infantryman of both monuments was believed to have been a photograph of Judge Reginald H Thompson of Louisville.

A Grand Master of Kentucky Masons, and Confederate veteran, Judge Thompson founded the Kentucky Children's Home and Newsboy's Home and Night School. He also took an active role with the Industrial School of Reform located across the street from the monument as well as the Masonic Widow's and Orphan's Home. During his funeral procession in 1899, those of all social classes and children from orphanages across the city of Louisville lined the streets.

The Muldoon Monument Company is still operating today as Muldoon Memorials.

Bessie Laub, art critic for the Courier-Journal in 1917, summarized the Confederate Monument in Louisville at the time:

Many monuments far more handsome, of more technical value, have been erected to the soldiers of the South, but none expresses better esteem, sympathy and feeling than the Confederate monument of Louisville.

— Bessie Laub, The Courier-Journal

Monument images

• Lou Confed North.jpg

  View of the monuments from the north

• Lou Confed Soldier2.JPG

  Front view of a Confederate artillerist. Note the aging of the marker

• Lou Confed Soldier.JPG

  Back view of a Confederate artillerist. Note the aging of the marker

• Calvaryman Louisville monument.png

  Closer view of cavalryman on west side of Confederate Monument.

• Lou Confed North Close.jpg

  Closeup from the front/North

• Lou Confed South Close.jpg

  Closeup from the back/South

See also

• John B. Castleman Monument
• Union Monument in Louisville
• 32nd Indiana Monument
• List of American Civil War monuments in Kentucky
• Louisville in the American Civil War
• History of Louisville, Kentucky

External links

• Vintage Postcards depicting the Monument
• Drawing, circa 1900, of Industrial School of Reform with monument in foreground
• Video of Press Conference, April 29, 2016
• Photo of Judge Reginald H Thompson, model for infantryman (top figure) on monument