RMW Ramblings

  Another Wilmington Relocated Statue Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont President James Garfield is not the only personage whose statue was relocated in Wilmington.  In 1884 Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont (his spelling) was memorialized by the dedication of statue in Washington, DC.  The statue, by sculptor Launt Thompson, was erected in Washington's Pacific Circle, renamed Dupont Circle (the official DC spelling). Here it is in 1900 [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Dupont_Circle_1900.png]. A Washington Post column from 2015 gives more of the story. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/before-there-was-a-fountain-in-dupont-circle-there-was-a-statue-an-ugly-one/2015/12/12/cbf0d08c-a04a-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html In 1917 the statue was removed and transported to Wilmington, replaced by the more imposing fountain also commemorating Admiral Du Pont, designed by Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon. The statue now is a neighbor of mine.  It marks the Tower...

Delaware Ave and Washington St A Changing Scene In our last post, you saw the intersection of Delaware Ave and Washington St as it looked in the 1950s. The Atlantic gas station dates to the 1920s.  The classical Greek style "pavilion," the original facility, was probably designed by the architect Joseph F Kunz, who did many service station designs for Atlantic Refining Co., many in this classical style, as told in a blog no longer available on-line.   The utilitarian vitreous enameled panel structure was a later addition.  In my memory, in the 1950s the Greek pavilion housed the restrooms.  When the gas station was razed in 1964, the Greek pavilion was acquired by Chick Laird, a well-known local philanthropist, and donated to Tatnall School on Barley Mill Road, near the now-residence of President Joe Biden. It was repurposed as an open air structure and still stands on the grounds of the Tatnall School campus. The intersection has even more recently been rebuilt and...

  Small Black Set 6. Greek Horse   Finishing up the sextet of small black ground paintings, Greek Horse was inspired by the stylized bronze horse figures of the Geometric Art period in ancient Greece, c900-700 BCE.  Again with copper and gold metallic paint.

  Sunrise Sandbar Heron To protect the wetlands, a sandbar barrier was created along the Havre de Grace waterfront Promenade.  It is now completely naturalized, but early on it was the site of various stonework temporary compositions,  stonework sculptural graffiti.  I lamented their demise, but they did not fit Maryland's preservation plans.  Of course the sandbar was not natural itself. Here I photographed a heron at morning sunrise at a  ring cairn or micro Stonehenge.