.::SETTEMBRE 2007::.

On July 30, 1850, Giuseppe Garibaldi [1807-1882] arrived in New York City. No tour of triumph this. Instead, after a failed revolution, the 43-year-old rebel was expelled from his homeland and sought refuge in the United States. Weary and in poor health, he wound up sharing a Staten Island cottage on Tompkins Avenue with the inventor Antonio Meucci until 1854. For four years, the former firebrand lived a low-wattage life as he recharged. Garibaldi spent his days hunting, fishing, and working in Meucci's factory making smokeless candles. But history throws its own light. That brief respite in the borough of Richmond firmly rooted respect for Garibaldi on American soil. For instance, in the early 1860s, at the beginning of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln offered him a command in the Union Army. However, Garibaldi declined to return to this country because he was busy in the Mediterranean, fighting to unify Italy. In fact, Garibaldi's escapades were still making headlines in the tabloids when Washington Square Park opened in New York during 1871. During the nineteenth century, the expensive northern side of Washington Square, bordered by stately block fronts of wealthy residential dwellings, became known as the "American district." In contrast, the haphazard southern side (an area now presided over by a cheerful statue of former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia) was gradually becoming an ever-expanding "little Italy." A tribute to the “Sword of Italian Unification” was commissioned at a time when a great influx of southern Italian immigrants was sparking new tensions between native New Yorkers and Italians new to this country. The sculptor, Giovanni Turini [1841-1899], who also designed the bronze bust of Mazzini unveiled in Central Park in 1878, had been a volunteer member of Garibaldi’s Fourth Regiment during the war between Italy and Austria in 1866. Donated by New York’s Italian-American community, the nine-feet tall bronze likeness on a granite pedestal was dedicated on June 2nd, 1888, the sixth anniversary of Garibaldi’s death. This dedication ceremony was celebrated by New York Mayor Abraham Hewitt along with 30 bands playing, the Garibaldi Guard, and three French military groups on parade. It was quite an occasion since his was the first monument to be erected in Washington Square Park. That does not mean that his sojourn in that Greenwich Village green space has been uneventful since then. In 1936, Berenice Abbott photographed the statue in a way that emphasized the clash between public sculpture and the surrounding architecture. Although his handsome profile is dramatically portrayed, Garibaldi seemed to be drawing his sword against a mountain of stone - - the 27-story modern apartment building at One Fifth Avenue [erected in 1928] nearby.

Thirty years later, a good-luck ritual had developed among New York University's Finance students. It became customary that each new student in the School of Finance would toss a penny at the base of the Garibaldi Monument at the start of the semester. Acknowledging this tradition and reinforcing its commitment to the community, in 1961 the university sponsored a wreath-laying ceremony to honor the centennial anniversary of Italy’s unification. In 1970, the Garibaldi monument was rotated so that it was no longer angled the way Berenice Abbott captured him on film. The statue was moved about 15 feet to the east to allow for construction of a promenade in Washington Square Park. And it was astonishing when a glass vessel, containing documents from the 1880s, was found under the original base of the statue. These enclosures included newspaper accounts of Garibaldi’s death, a history of the Committee for the Monument of Garibaldi, the organization that helped place the statue, and a poster for (and news clippings about) the monument’s 1888 dedication. Alas, by 1998, the monument looked very shabby and the scabbard — — a sheath for holding a sword — — was gone. Fortunately, the statue was restored by the City Parks Foundation Monuments Conservation Program. The treatment included cleaning, repainting, and applying a protective coating to the bronze sculpture, as well as cleaning and repairing the stone pedestal. In September 2000, another Italian unification occurred. Garibaldi’s scabbard, vandalized and long in storage, was finally reinstalled and unified with his sword. As that was happening, the New York City Art Commission was considering the fate of Garibaldi. Eventually, they approved moving the Giuseppe Garibaldi statue — — again — — to the northern area of the ovals that he currently occupies on the park's central east-west pathway. The two-hundredth-year commemoration of Garibaldi's birth in 1807 incited some authors to reassess his legacy. A savvy soldier, Garibaldi knew the value of stage-managing his own celebrity, explains Lucy Riall in her fascinating new biography: Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero [Yale University Press, 2007]. Riall offers many examples of Garibaldi deliberately staging promotional pay-offs for himself that gullible reporters could write about. There's an ideal spot for reading new books about the leader of the Red Shirts. Benches near his bronze twin in Washington Square Park are most suitable for contemplation.

IDEA SETTEMBRE 2007