A little bit o’ history

by chuckofish

On this day in 1849 at a convention in St. Louis’s old courthouse, 800 delegates heard a speech by Missouri’s veteran U.S. senator Thomas Hart Benton. With his customary persuasiveness, Benton launched into a recital of the glories and riches which would come from a transcontinental railway.

Summing up his argument, he pointed majestically westward and cried, “There is the East! There is India!” Expertly phrased, perfectly timed, and dramatically delivered, Benton’s stunning conclusion electrified his audience and strengthened the case for the projected railroads as no other argument had done.

The occasion is preserved in the bronze statue of Benton in Lafayette Park as portrayed by American sculptor Harriet Hosmer. The closing words of his speech are engraved at his feet.

Harriet Hosmer was about 30 years old and living in Rome when she received the commission. She sculpted the statue in Rome in 1861. It was then cast by the Royal Bronze Foundry in Munich in 1864.

The resulting statue is a colossal standing figure of Senator Benton. It stands ten feet tall and is two feet, ten inches wide and deep. Benton wears a classical toga over a contemporary jacket and neck scarf. He is wearing sandals, faces west and holds a partially unrolled scroll of a map with the word “America” on it. Dedicated in 1868, it was the first public monument in the State of Missouri.

The park also boasts a bronze casting from a life-sized statue of George Washington by French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, which was placed in the park in 1869.

Lafayette Park was set aside from the St. Louis Common in 1836 and dedicated in 1851 as one of the first public parks, and by far the largest of its era, in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. It is considered by many historians to be the oldest urban park west of the Mississippi. Indeed, at 30 acres, Lafayette Park is one of the larger parks in the city even though it is still dwarfed by Forest Park which is about 46 times larger.

*Information for this post is from St. Louis Day By Day by Frances Hurd Stadler and the Lafayette Park Conservancy.