Lee, Robert E., Monument

About this property

The Robert E. Lee Monument, formerly in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a historic statue dedicated to Confederate general Robert E. Lee by American sculptor Alexander Doyle. It was removed (intact) by official order and moved to an unknown location on May 19, 2017. Any future display is uncertain. Efforts to raise funds to build the statue began after Lee's death in 1870 by the Robert E. Lee Monument Association, which by 1876 had raised the $36,400 needed. The association's president was Louisiana Supreme Court justice Charles E. Fenner, a segregationist who wrote a lower court opinion in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. Sculptor Alexander Doyle was hired to sculpt the brass statue, which was installed in 1884. The granite base and pedestal was designed and built by John Ray [Roy], architect; contract dated 1877, at a cost of $26,474. John Hagan, a builder, was contracted to "furnish and set" the column at a cost of $9,350. The monument was dedicated in 1884, at Tivoli Circle (since commonly called Lee Circle) on St. Charles Avenue. Dignitaries present at the dedication on February 22—George Washington's birthday—included former Confederate president Jefferson Davis, two daughters of General Lee—Mary Custis Lee and Mildred Childe Lee—and Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard. The statue itself rises 16'6" tall, with an 8'4" base, standing on a 60' column with an interior staircase, according to a schematic released by the City of New Orleans on the day of the removal of the statue and its base, May 19, 2017. The Lee statue faced "north where, as local lore has it, he can always look in the direction of his military adversaries." In January 1953, the statue of Lee was lifted from atop the column for repairs to the monument's foundation. The statue was returned to its perch in January the following year. The monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. It was included by New Orleans magazine in June 2011 as one of the city's "11 important statues". On June 24, 2015, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu acknowledged the impact of the June 2015 Charleston church shooting, but credited a 2014 conversation with New Orleans jazz ambassador Wynton Marsalis for his decision to call for the removal of the Lee statue and renaming of Lee Circle and other city memorials dedicated to Confederate slaveholders. As part of a sixty-day period for public input, two city commissions called for the removal of four monuments associated with the Confederacy: the Lee statue, statues of Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard, and an obelisk commemorating the Battle of Liberty Place. Governor Bobby Jindal opposed the removals.

Location

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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