The Hall of Fame for Great Americans is an outdoor sculpture gallery located on the grounds of Bronx Community College (BCC) in the Bronx, New York City. Designed by Stanford White and built in 1901 as part of the University Heights campus of New York University (NYU), it was the first hall of fame in the United States. The hall commemorates 102 prominent Americans, selected by a board of electors and grouped into one of fifteen categories. The physical structure consists of a loggia with colonnades measuring long. The colonnades contain niches with plaques and 96 bronze portrait busts, and the structure itself conceals a retaining wall for the Gould Memorial Library.
The philanthropist Helen Gould donated funds for the structure in 1900, and the Hall of Fame was formally dedicated on May 30, 1901. Soon after the Hall of Fame opened, it became a focal point for U.S. national pride. Originally, the hall only contained plaques honoring native-born U.S. citizens. The first bust was installed in 1907, and foreign-born citizens were inducted starting in 1915. The majority of the busts were sculpted between 1922 and 1930. Most of the busts dedicated between 1930 and 1970 were installed shortly after the elections of their respective honorees.
The Hall of Fame became part of BCC after NYU sold its Bronx campus to the City University of New York in 1973. The last honorees were elected in 1976, and the Hall of Fame has largely fallen into obscurity since then. The busts of Louis Brandeis, Clara Barton, Luther Burbank, and Andrew Carnegie were never sculpted due to a lack of funding, while the remaining 98 busts started to decay over the years. Following periods of deterioration, BCC renovated the Hall of Fame several times in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. BCC removed the busts of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in 2017 following a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to a broader national outcry against Confederate monuments.
Design The memorial structure is an open-air loggia flanked by colonnades. Designed in the neoclassical style by architect Stanford White of the firm McKim, Mead & White, it was built as part of New York University's (NYU) Bronx campus. The loggia has space for 102 bronze sculptural busts. The loggia runs to the west of the Hall of Languages, Gould Memorial Library, and Hall of Philosophy from south to north. The section around the Gould Library is curved to the west.
Dimensions and specifications The loggia measures long. The original section measured long, and the firm of Crow, Lewis and Wick designed a annex, with McKim, Mead & White as supervising architects. Sedgwick Avenue, which runs directly west of the Hall of Fame, is about beneath the hall. The Hall of Fame's walkway measures wide, flanked by parapets measuring high.
The northern and southern entrances to the Hall of Fame both contain sculpted gates designed by Samuel Yellin. The gates were donated by Mrs. Charles Beatty Alexander in memory of her late husband. The words "Enter with Joy that those within have lived" are inscribed above the northern gates, while the words "Take counsel here of Beauty, Wisdom, Power" are inscribed above the southern gates. The parapets are made of Massachusetts granite, while the pedestals and columns are made of Indiana limestone. The eight pedestals contain the inscriptions "The Hall of Fame / for Great Americans / by wealth of thought / or else by mighty deed / they served mankind / in noble character / in world-wide good / they live forevermore". The ceiling of the loggia is made of Guastavino tile, while the sloped roof above is clad with red Spanish tile.
Busts and plaques The Hall of Fame was originally planned to have space for 150 plaques, each measuring . As designed, the plaques measure about tall and wide. Louis Comfort Tiffany designed each plaque, which includes information about each honoree's name and lifespan, as well as a quote from each honoree. The western walls of the Hall of Language and the Hall of Philosophy, which face the Hall of Fame, are also used for inscriptions.
As of 2017, the hall contains 96 busts, which are placed on pedestals above the parapet walls. Beneath each bust is a bronze tablet bearing the name of the person commemorated, significant dates, achievements, and quotations. The busts themselves were created by a variety of sculptors at various times. Each class of honorees is placed in a different portion of the hall; for example, authors' and editors' busts are placed at the north end, while inventors' busts are placed at the south end.
Next to the Hall of Fame is a bust of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War. Lafayette is the only non-American citizen in the complex, though he was given honorary U.S. citizenship. Above his bust is the inscription "New York University to Lafayette 1932", while below is the inscription "I am an American citizen and an American officer."
Museum of the Hall of Fame There are storage rooms behind the foundation halls and below the walkway. This space was originally used as the Museum of the Hall of Fame, which contained exhibits and portraits of the hall's honorees. When the Hall of Fame opened, NYU used some of the museum space as classrooms. The museum consisted of six rooms and a corridor; one of the rooms was named the Washington Gallery, after honoree George Washington.
History
Origin and inspiration Dr. Henry Mitchell MacCracken, chancellor of NYU, proposed the Hall of Fame in the late 1890s to conceal a retaining wall for the Gould Memorial Library, which was exposed because the site sloped steeply downward to the west. According to MacCracken, the hall "owes its inception in large part to hard facts of physical geography". MacCracken took inspiration from the Ruhmeshalle (Hall of Fame) in Munich, Germany, completed in 1853. The Hall of Fame for Great Americans was the first hall of fame in the United States. The word "fame" in the hall's name meant "renown", rather than the modern-day meaning of "celebrity". Chancellor McCracken described the evolution of the Hall of Fame's design:
Plans for the Hall of Fame finally proceeded after Helen Gould donated $100,000 in March 1900. John J. Tucker received the general contract for the Hall of Fame. The hall was to contain commemorative plaques for 150 individuals, 50 of whom were to be selected in 1900. Every five years thereafter, the electors would select five additional names by majority vote, with the final selections being made in 2000. An individual was eligible only if they were born in the U.S. and had died at least ten years prior. NYU invited 100 people to serve as electors in late March 1900. At that point, the cost of the hall had nearly doubled to $200,000. Each U.S. state originally had one elector; in twenty states, the chief justice served as that state's elector.
The electors received 252 nominations, only 30 of which received the required majority of fifty votes. In October 1900, the NYU Senate approved the first inductees for inclusion. The Senate also approved the addition of a loggia for foreign-born inductees, with space for up to thirty names. The hall included 29 names when it was dedicated on May 30, 1901; the foreign inductees' loggia had not yet been built due to a lack of funds. When the Hall of Fame was completed, it was so widely known that The New York Times regularly reported on nominations and elections, even detailing how many votes each nominee received.
Elections and heyday
1900s and 1910s The NYU Senate contemplated hosting a special election in 1902 to fill the 21 vacancies, but it reneged on this plan. Instead, the electors had to select 26 native-born men during the 1905 election, as well as 12 women and six foreign-born men. A women's hall of fame was announced in February 1904. Separate elections were hosted for women and for foreign-born men. Every person who received at least ten votes in the 1900 election was re-nominated. Male nominees needed at least 51 votes; female nominees only required 47 votes because eight electors refused to vote for any woman. Five native-born men, three women, and three foreign-born men were selected that year; their plaques were dedicated in 1907. The Hall of Fame's first bust (depicting Horace Mann, who had been elected in 1900) was also dedicated in 1907. The foreign-born honorees were not inducted at the time because MacCracken was planning a separate wing for them. Some electors protested that the foreign-born and native-born honorees should be honored together.
Eleven additional names were selected in 1910. In the five years that followed, 20 electors either retired or died, and 25 electors were appointed in their place. MacCracken changed the rules for electors ahead of the 1915 election, such that one elector was apportioned to every state or group of states with one million residents. As a result of the United States' population growth, each state again had its own elector in later years. MacCracken canceled plans for a separate wing for foreign-born honorees in 1914, allowing foreign-born citizens to be inducted into the existing Hall of Fame. Four foreign-born men had been elected in 1905 and 1910, but they had never been inducted. In addition, the electors were allowed to select at least two women in every election. The planned northern extension of the Hall of Fame was never built.
In early 1915, NYU announced plans for a separate women's wing after receiving $33,000 in donations. That year, the electors selected seven new names (including Charlotte Cushman, the first performer to be elected) as well as two of the foreign-born honorees from the previous elections. An additional 21 electors either retired or died in the next five years, and only 34 of the original electors remained by 1920. The Hall of Fame was temporarily converted to a barracks in 1918, during World War I. The United States Army laid out beds for 600 soldiers in the museum underneath the colonnade. The next year, writer Robert Underwood Johnson was appointed as the Hall of Fame's second director, following the death of MacCracken, his immediate predecessor.
1920s and 1930s Between the two world wars, the Hall of Fame saw up to 50,000 visitors annually. Seven Americans were selected in 1920, including foreign-born theologian Roger Williams, who had first been elected ten years prior. Five busts, depicting nominees from previous elections, were unveiled in May 1922; they were the first busts to be added since 1907. The same year, the Hall of Fame's board of electors decided to abolish separate elections for female nominees. The board also enacted stricter inclusion criteria: nominees were only considered if they had been dead for at least 25 years, and three-fifths of electors had to agree on induction. The electors had been concerned that "zealous partisans and relatives" would attempt to nominate individuals of "temporary vogue" shortly after their deaths. The honorees' tablets, which had been segregated by gender, were subsequently rearranged. New tablets had to be created for each of the seven female honorees because the existing tablets were wedged so firmly into the hall's foundation.