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GARIBALDI MEMORIAL Garibaldi Memorial,
variant image After the defeat of his Roman army, the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi sought refuge from 1850 to 1854 with his friend Antonio Meucci, a Florentine stage designer and inventor who had settled in this small cottage on Staten Island. In the 1880s, Meucci's landlord gave the house to the Garibaldi Society, and in 1907, at the centenary of Garibaldi's birth, the Society erected a concrete "pantheon" to "protect as well as glorify the poor, ungarnished wooden shrine." In 1923, a sculptural monument to Meucci was erected on the lawn in front of the cottage. In a variant image, Abbott included the Meucci monument in the foreground. She rejected this version for the more straightforward portrayal, but one that highlighted the memorial's oddest detail--a column piercing the porch of the house it was meant to preserve. In 1952, the decrepit "pantheon" was torn down, but the house is still maintained as the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum. Return to Staten Island |
