Jul 19th
2018“PEACE” COMES TO STUYVESANT EAST (1921)

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Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes.
The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
Do you know the history of YOUR house?
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In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War.

We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park.

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After nearly three years of mourning, Stuyvesant East was ready to remember its dead in a very public way.

On 11 September 1921, after neighbors in the eastern section of Stuyvesant Heights had spent two years collecting the $6,000 necessary to defray the cost of a war memorial, the Victory and Peace statue was finally delivered to Saratoga Square.

With great pomp and circumstance, amid a good deal of political speech-making and the delivery of grandiose eulogies and war veterans celebrating the war’s end, the 6-ton war memorial, sculpted by James Novelli, was unveiled at the Saratoga Avenue entrance to the Saratoga Square in front of more than 3,000 witnesses.

“The eastern end of the park had been appropriately decorated with the monument draped in large American flags which at the presentation were dropped by two servicemembers presenting to view the ten-foot Milford granite memorial.” Revealed was its bronze figure depicting “Victory and Peace” inscribed upon which were the words “E pluribus unum – in memory of the heroic dead by residents Districts 31-32 of the City of New York – A.D. MCMXXI.”

On the two plates that flanked the figure were the names of the young men from the Eastern section of Stuyvesant Heights who had lost their lives in the war.

“We offered the best we had in this great cause and they never failed us,” Elmer G. Sammis, president of the Draft Board 31, commented to the crowd gathered. “They gave to America and American ideals a new place in the estimation of all men. “So long as the memory of our departed heroes survives,” Sammis continued in his speech, “we must be vigilant to preserve the heritage which they have left us.”

OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORY FADES…

At some point, though, that memory of these departed heroes would begin to fade. With the exception of an upsurge in activity around the statue during the Second World War, World War One began to seem like a distant memory.

The memorial wreaths were laid less and less, salutes fired more infrequently, and taps sounded only every few years or so, as the rolls of the American Legion Posts fell in number and residents moved out of the neighborhoods, and the parents of the war dead passed on, themselves. Other than in 1936, when the city built a playground in the park, which was renovated in the 1990s, not much news was made there until the bronze plates, containing the names of the men from the area who had lost their lives during WWI, were stolen from the Saratoga War Memorial in 1974.

Then, 26 years later in 2000, the statue of “Victory and Peace” met its final humiliation when the bronze figure itself was detached from its base by thieves and stolen. (By the time the statue was eventually discovered, it had been cut up into small pieces.) All that remained at this point was the Massachusetts pink granite base which showed the shadows of the former rolls and the statue of Victory and Peace. (To see a minute-long news-story of the 2000 theft of the statue, click here. – source NY1)

NEW LIFE FOR VICTORY AND PEACE

In recent years, a number of local citizens started a petition to recreate the stolen statue and plates and return them to their former glory within the park. That petition eventually had its effect as the City of New York allocated the money to fund this project. According to the website of the City’s Parks Department, the statue is expected to be returned to the park this summer:

“The vandalized war memorial in Saratoga Park is being recreated and restored. By referencing historical photographs, archival documents, and the recovered pieces of the bronze figure, the memorial’s stolen sculpture and honor rolls will be recreated using new plaster molds, and recast in bronze on the original pedestal. The granite sections of the pedestal will be cleaned, the masonry joints will be repointed, and the monument will be reset on a new concrete foundation.”

During the last week in May, the Parks Department set up a chain link fence in preparation for placing a reproduction of “Victory & Peace” – and the rolls listing the names of the war dead – back onto the original marble base. A few months later the memorial was returned to its based and the rededication ceremony was held.

Click HERE for pictures from the rededication ceremony, including descendants of some of the men of Stuyvesant East who made the ultimate sacrifice during WWI. And HERE for coverage of the ceremony.

See Pt. V, THE BLOOD BUBBLING IN SARATOGA FIELD, Monday.

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The Brownstone Detectives

Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.

Post Categories: 1920-1930, 1930-1940, 1970-1980, Saratoga Park, Stuyvesant Heights
Tags: Saratoga Park, World War I, WWI