Sedgwick County Memorial Hall and Soldiers and Sailors Monument -- Wichita KS
N 37° 41.620 W 097° 20.240
14S E 646588 N 4173128
The Classical Greek Revivial Civil War monument and Memorial Hall by Viquesney (more famed for his Spirit of the Doughboy bronzes) has been restored recently to its former glory. These 2 structures were placed on the National Register in 1998.
Waymark Code: WMH1EW
Location: Kansas, United States
Date Posted: 05/06/2013
Views: 3
From the nomination form: (
visit link)
"The Sedgwick County Memorial Hall and Soldiers and Sailors Monument, built in 1912-13 and known as the Soldiers and Sailors Civil War Monument, is dedicated to the Union Soldiers and Sailors who fought and died in the Civil War. The monument is located on the south lawn of the Historic Sedgwick County Courthouse, itself on the National Register of Historic Places, and faces south onto Central Avenue, then as now a major downtown Wichita thoroughfare. . . .
Sedgwick County's Civil War monument is a simple, elegant ashlar building of Vermont granite . . . which includes four bronze military figures.3 The monument was designed by Ernest Monroe Viquesney (1876-1946) of Marietta, Georgia. Viquesney was an architect, but he is best known as the sculptor of Doughboy statues that proliferated throughout the country after the First World War.
The monument is an eighteen-foot-square building, measuring fifty feet in height from its base to the apex of the pedestal that crowns it. . . . The building sits upon a series of three granite steps approached from all four sides, in the manner of a Greek temple. It has three parts: the Memorial Hall, a square drum, and cupola that tapers toward its apex and is surmounted by a granite plinth.
Sedgwick County's Civil War Monument is like a miniature Greek temple, dedicated to those who fought and died for the Union cause in the Civil War. It is in the tradition of classical temples dedicated to victory, such as the diminutive fifth-century B. C. Temple of Athena Nike (Victory) on the Athenian acropolis. Memorial Hall is an example of Greek Revival architecture, a popular style for war monuments and civic buildings during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The free-standing Greek Doric columns, finely cut and mortared granite blocks and the crisp, sharp carving of the military insignia and lettering of Memorial Hall are hallmarks of Greek Revival architecture. The selection of the Greek Doric style was undoubtedly intended to associate Sedgwick County's Civil War monument and the Union cause with Athens as the cradle of democracy in the western world." [end]