St. Joan of the Upper West Side

I've been spending the week in Manhattan, and just behind where I'm staying is a 20-foot-high statue of Joan of Arc, riding toward the Hudson River astride a horse with a sword in her right arm. The Maid of Orleans seems to be popping up a lot for me these days -- a couple weeks ago, when I visited the Boston Public Library's exhibit on the history of the Archdiocese of Boston I encountered the nearby display cases containing Cardinal Wright's quirky collection of Joan of Arc memorabilia. I was curious how her statue wound up on the Upper West Side, and whether there are a lot of religious figures memorialized in city parks. So I e-mailed Jama Adams, the spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, who e-mailed right back, saying, "I'm partial to Joan of Arc myself (I chose her as a patron saint - bravery and strength and all).''

It turns out that the Joan of Arc memorial (right), by Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (a Cambridge native!), was actually erected in Riverside Park in 1915, before the French heroine was canonized, after several years of efforts by New Yorkers seeking to memorialize her. The sculpture's base includes limestone blocks from the tower in Rouen where Joan had been imprisoned.

A little background here: Joan of Arc was a 15th Century peasant who wound up being burned to death as a heretic after leading France in a successful battle against an English invasion during the Hundred Years' War. She was a deeply religious woman -- a visionary who cited divine inspiration for her efforts and who believed she communicated with God -- and although church officials played a role in her trial and execution, she was later canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1920.

I asked Adams, the parks spokeswoman, about the extent of religious statuary in New York City parks, and she pointed me to this site, which indicates that there are 12 memorials to religious leaders in the 4,000 properties overseen by the parks department, although about half of those memorials are simply plaques or other sorts of markers. Probably the most famous is the statue of the Rev. Francis P. Duffy, a military chaplain who is memorialized right in Times Square, but there are also some lesser-known religious artworks, including a contemporary sculpture of Job in Queens.

(Image at right from the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.)