The newly restored Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial across from the Massachusetts State House, is being unveiled to the public on Friday, May 28 and through Memorial Day Weekend. The iconic public monument just underwent a $3 million restoration over the past year.
Visitors may sign a restoration book at the Memorial from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. from May 28-31.
The restoration of the bronze memorial was carried out at Skylight Studios in Woburn, Massachusetts, led by sculptor Robert Shure and his team of specialists. Additional stone work restoration was done in Lenox.
The restoration initiative was led by a unique partnership that included the National Park Service, City of Boston Parks and Recreation Department, Friends of the Public Garden and Museum of African American History.
First unveiled on May 31, 1897, the Shaw Memorial pays homage to the 54th Black Infantry Regiment of Boston, considered one of America’s most significant Civil War memorials. It was the first public monument to accurately depict black soldiers in military uniform.
The memorial was created by immigrant Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), recognized as America’s greatest sculptor of the 19th century. The memorial was unveiled on Memorial Day, located near the site where Civil War regiments mustered on Boston Common before going off to war. Notable guests at the ceremony included acclaimed Black inventor and leader Booker T. Washington, philosopher and writer William James, along with veterans of the 54th Regiment and the families of the soldiers.
It took Saint-Gaudens fourteen years to complete the memorial, partly because there was an early disagreement within the memorial commission about how the piece should look, but also because the perfectionist artist approached the project in a painstaking manner: seeking out forty black men in New York to use as models, from which he chose 16 to appear on the final memorial. He also spent considerable time wrangling with the commission about the exact wording of the inscriptions.
Of the delay, Saint Gaudens wrote, “My own delay I excuse on the ground that a sculptor’s work endures for so long that it is next to a crime for him to neglect to do everything that lies in his power to execute a result that will not be a disgrace….A poor picture goes into the garret, books are forgotten, but the bronze remains, to amuse or shame the populace.”
Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) was born on March 1, 1848 on Charlemount Street in Dublin at the height of the Irish Famine, when millions of Irish were fleeing Ireland to places like Boston, New York, Montreal, St. John and other eastern port cities. His father Bernard Saint-Gaudens was a French cobbler who had "a wonderfully complex mixture of a fierce French accent and Irish brogue." His mother, Mary McGuinness, was born in Bally Mahon, County Longford, to Arthur McGuinness and Mary Daly.
The family emigrated to Boston in September 1848, when Augustus was six months old. They stayed here for a while and then moved to New York, where Augustus’ brother and fellow-sculptor Louis was born.
Augustus spent time around Boston, since his wife's family lived in Roxbury and he had numerous commissions here. He was highly regarded by Boston's cultural leaders like architect H. H. Richardson, who recommended him for the Shaw Memorial, and Charles McKim, the architect who designed the stone monument in which the bronze statue is placed.
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