Local Landmarks: JP's Civil War Monument Still Inspires

Jamaica Plain’s Civil War Monument is known by us locals as simply “the Monument.”  It is appropriate therefore to begin this, the first in a series of local landmarks, with what Michael Reiskind of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society wrote “is our town's most recognizable landmark.”  Fittingly, this year, also marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which the Boston Public Library is observing in a series of system-wide commemorative events.

Today, the city will , in a ceremony slated to start at 12:30 p.m.

JP may not be Rome or Paris but at the intersection of Centre and South Streets, we have our own little indisputable “Column of Trajan” or “Place de la Bastille.”  The Monument has lent its name to a sandwich at nearby Fiore’s Bakery, to , and the surrounding artsy neighborhood  has even been baptized by a local realtor as SoMo (south of the Monument.) 

At the time of its construction, Jamaica Plain did not even exist, and was, wrote Reiskind, “erected by the short-lived Town of West Roxbury,” of which JP was part from 1851-1874. According to the Jamaica Plain Historical Society’s Walter H. Marx the Civil War, or Soldier’s Monument as it is sometimes called, was originally commissioned at a cost of $15,000 and was dedicated on September 14, 1871.

The site chosen, explained Marx, was a triangle of land that was once home to the community’s first schoolhouse, built in 1676. At the time of its completion, he wrote, the location “was the center of the town with the new town hall (Curtis Hall), having been built in 1868 diagonally across the street.”  Long beforeand Super Fusion Sushi, the Monument then shared company with the built in 1854, and the 1760

Designed by W.W. Lumis, the Monument was built in the Gothic Revival style of architecture, a reaction both to industrialization and the prevailing Neoclassicism of the time.  Marx describes the symmetrical four-sided sculpture as being built on a three-step base of Quincy granite.  Four pinnacles, carved with anchors, cannon, guns, and sword, are capped by bronze finials. Although more than forty soldiers from the Town of West Roxbury died in the conflict, the names of only 23 townsmen are inscribed in the encased tablet that timelessly commemorates their heroism.  Most movingly, the monument is crowned with a sculpture, carved by Joseph Sala, of a pensive Union soldier with his head solemnly lowered and at ease resting on his rifle.

Modest by Big Dig standards, Marx reports that there were some cost overruns with the project, The final tab was approximately $22,000, of which $3,500 was spent on the statue.

Though art may be eternal, it is not necessarily immutable. In last year's “ exhibit, local artist and co-owner Rob Festa reinterpreted JP’s most iconic sculpture with his photograph “Gotham.”  On recent Memorial Days, the Civil War Monument has commemorated those fallen in more recent conflicts, including Lance Corporal Alexander Arredondo, for whom the was recently named.

Although currently on hold, there are plans in the works to reconfigure the traffic patterns of the streets surrounding Monument Square.  If you recall the scaffolding at the site last year, then you know that the City of Boston undertook a comprehensive conservation effort to clean and repoint the Monument.  (That landmark effort received a 2011 Preservation Achievement Award from the Boston Preservation Alliance.)

If you've only ever walked by you might not have noticed there's another monument right next to it, this one a puddingstone boulder dedicated to the Minutemen who fought in the Revolution.

"It's the 'other monument' of Monument Square," JP historian Gretchen Crozier wrote in an email.

The conservation effort at that's being celebrated on Saturday guarantees that our timeless and treasured Monument will continue to watch over JP as the neighborhood continues to grow and transform itself.