Hall of Fame for Great Americans

The Hall of Fame for Great Americans ( Hall of Fame for great Americans ) is a Hall of Fame in New York City.

Location

The Hall of Fame for Great Americans is located in New York City Bronx County, on the site of Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. Your location is the summit of a mountain range that dominates the area and the University Heights was originally part of the campus of New York University.

Origins

The Hall of Fame was inaugurated on 30 May 1901. She was a project by Henry Mitchell MacCracken, the then Chancellor of the University, the most outstanding citizens of the United States adequately honor in this way and bring them into the public consciousness. It was this is the first Hall of Fame of the United States. The lavish building was donated by the philanthropist Helen Miller Shepard.

Concept and architecture

The Hall of Fame, built by the architect Stanford White, is laid out in the form of a curved 192 -meter-long colonnade neoclassical outdoors.

The spaces between the columns provide space for the installation of a total of 102 bronze portrait busts on pedestals. Below each monument is a bronze plaque is attached, which is called the name of the sitter, important biographical data, outstanding performances and memorable quotes. Each of the busts had to be created specifically for the Hall of Fame and was not allowed to be copied for a period of 50 years after their formation.

Selection criteria

To be nominated for inclusion in the Hall of Fame can, had the person concerned U.S. citizen by birth or - since 1914 - his naturalization, at least 25 years earlier passed his ( 1900-1920 was this time only 10 years) and a significant have made contribution to the economy, politics and culture of the United States.

Every citizen of the United States could propose candidates for nomination. The selection was ( after 1970 every three years) taken every five years by a vote of an electoral college consisting of prominent representatives from all states. To record originally filed a simple majority; in the years 1925 to 1940 a three - fifths majority was necessary afterwards there was a return to the original selection mode. 1976, the majority vote was replaced by a points system.

Only two persons, Constance Fenimore Woolson ( nominated 1900) and Orville Wright (recorded in 1965 ), were exceptionally prematurely allowed to vote because they were only six and 17 years dead.

Current situation

In the first decades of its existence, the Hall of Fame was an important New York landmark and place of national importance. The inclusion in the ranks of there honoree was considered overweight nude and outstanding appraisal.

However, the attractiveness and importance of the Hall of Fame dwindled over the years; the establishment fell into oblivion, and private donations, from which they financed, since the entry was free, dried up.

1973 the University moved to a new campus; the terrain, and with it the construction of the Hall of Fame, was taken over by the state of New York. The conceived by neglect in decline colonnades were renovated in the late 1970s with public funds for three million U.S. dollars; In the following period another 200,000 dollars were raised for the restoration of the part considerably weathered busts.

Since the funds of the Hall of Fame are exhausted by the lack of donations, since 1976 no new meetings of the election body could be more organized. Only 98 of the 102 honorees are represented by busts, because it was not possible to fund the last monuments to the 70s in the years admitted.

Members of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans

The honorees in the order of their inclusion in the Hall of Fame:

The three people last recorded in the Hall of Fame and Louis D. Brandeis are not represented by busts.

The Bronx May 30 Chancellor (education) Jonathan Edwards (theologian) Samuel Morse Robert E. Lee William Tecumseh Sherman Frances Willard (suffragist) Mark Hopkins, Jr. Augustus Saint-Gaudens Roger Williams (theologian) Josiah Willard Gibbs Stonewall Jackson
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