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Confederate Soldiers Memorial

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1874–1875, Robert Reid, sculptor; 1879 altered, David Richards, sculptor; 2006 restored, DPK&A Architects. Forsyth Park

The Confederate Soldiers Memorial culminates the sequence of equally spaced monuments along the Bull Street axis and aligns to the east and west with Gwinnett Street, the former southern city limit. Savannah’s Ladies Memorial Association raised $10,000 from 1868 to 1874 for the memorial and stipulated that it could not be made of Northern materials, built by Northern workmen, or travel through any Northern state. Montreal sculptor Reid used Nova Scotia sandstone for the monument, which was shipped by sea to avoid touching Union soil. Dedicated in 1875, the original monument included statues depicting Judgment and Silence that met with such unfavorable public opinion that they were replaced by the lone soldier facing north by New York sculptor David Richards in 1879. (Silence was moved to Laurel Grove Cemetery [11.9] in the section for Savannah soldiers killed at Gettysburg; Judgment was moved to a cemetery in Thomasville, Georgia.) The flanking pair of bronze busts representing two Savannah Civil War heroes, Major General Lafayette McLaws and Colonel Francis S. Bartow (1901–1902, G. J. Zolnay, sculptor), which formerly stood in Chippewa Square and were moved here in 1909 to make room for the Oglethorpe Monument. The 2006 restoration, carried out by Sterling Builders and Restoration, involved conservation work and replacing deteriorated stonework.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Robin B. Williams with David Gobel, Patrick Haughey, Daves Rossell, and Karl Schuler
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Citation

Robin B. Williams with David Gobel, Patrick Haughey, Daves Rossell, and Karl Schuler, "Confederate Soldiers Memorial", [Savannah, Georgia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/GA-02-10.1.2.

Print Source

Buildings of Savannah, Robin B. Williams. With David Gobel, Patrick Haughey, Daves Rossell, and Karl Schuler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016, 180-181.

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