Pilgrim Sculpture
In 1879 the New England Society of the City of New York, an organization formed to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, formed a committee to oversee the erection of a monument in Central Park. The monument was intended to honor the settlers’ arrival, as well as establish the Puritans as being foundational for modern American values. Architect Richard Morris Hunt and American sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward collaborated on the monument, with Hunt designing the pedestal with bronze bas-reliefs and Ward creating the Pilgrim statuary on top. Ward’s statue was not a specific individual, but rather an idealized Puritan man. The monument was unveiled on June 6, 1885.
In 2015 EverGreene was contracted to remove the aged Incralac lacquer and wax coatings on the Pilgrim statue portion of the monument. The coatings were first used in 1980 as an early effort by the Central Park Conservancy to protect its collection of outdoor monuments. These coatings were used until the mid-2010s when the Conservancy decided to convert all of their statues to a newer wax coating system. EverGreene conservators use a 100 watt Nd:YAG laser to ablate the aged coating and clean the surface in preparation for re-patination and coating by the Conservancy monuments conservation team.
This work was performed as part of a larger project to survey, assess, and treat New York City’s sculptural collection in collaboration with the Central Park Conservancy and the New York City Department of Parks. The larger project took place over a more than ten year period; each piece was brought to maintenance standards through careful conservation treatments, and continually preserved using comprehensive on-going annual assessment and maintenance. More than 60 student interns from graduate programs in North and South America and Europe were trained in conservation through these programs. Contributions from major corporate and foundation supporters maintained these efforts. The program has received awards from the New York City Art Commission, New York Preservation League, and Heritage Preservation/Save Outdoor Sculpture for both the programs as a whole and for individual treatments.
