A statue for Abe
Landmark will commemorate president’s 1860 stop to Harris Hall
The city has awarded a contract to The Steel Yard to construct a statue that commemorates Abraham Lincoln’s visit.
WOONSOCKET — The city has awarded an $8,500 contract for the fabrication of a public statue commemorating President Lincoln’s 1860 campaign visit to Harris Hall to The Steel Yard, an award-winning industrial arts program in Providence.
One of three bidders for the project, The Steel Yard was selected on the recommendation of City Planner Rui Almeida, according to Blake Collins, a spokesman for City Hall.
The other bidders were sculptors Tony Luongo of North Smithfield and Robert Shure of Skylight Studios in Woburn, Mass. Luongo proposed a life-size bronze sculpture of the president. Neither Shure nor The Steel Yard offered much detail about the concept, but Almeida decided the latter’s proposal was the best fit because it essentially makes the city a partner in brainstorming an original design for the sculpture.
“The Steel Yard proposes full adherence to the bid guidelines,” the notes form Almeida’s bid analysis say. “No specific design is proposed, as requested, leaving the city to fully participate in the design process.”
The bid award comes about a year after the city received a grant for the project from the Rhode Island Foundation. Almeida says the goal is to create a unique work of public art as a tribute to a campaign speech Lincoln, then a U.S. senator from Illinois, delivered at Harris Hall on March 8, 1860. He said the city is looking for something that is artistically innovative, true to the historical moment it’s designed to showcase and broadly appealing to the general public.
Plans are to display the statue at One Depot Square – site of the original Providence & Worcester train station where Lincoln arrived by rail car in 1860. The depot hasn’t been used for passenger rail in at least 50 years, but Vin Bono of the startup Boston Surface Rail Company began leasing the state-owned facility about two years ago with an eye toward resurrecting commuter rail service.
Almeida’s bid notes say The Steel Yard will meet with city officials to fine-tune a general vision for the sculpture. The nonprofit organization will then hire two local artists to create at least “two rough concept sketches for different directions that the sculpture could take,” according to Almeida.
“It represents a significant piece of Woonsocket and we’re looking forward to the great work The Steel Yard is known for far and wide.”
It will be up to city officials to choose the design they think best fits the project guidelines. Only then would the fabrication of the statue begin, a process expected to last about 11 weeks.
“The city is really excited to be moving forward with this project,” said Collins. “It represents a significant piece of Woonsocket history and we’re looking forward to the great work The Steel Yard is known for far and wide.”
Founded in 2001 by Nick Bauta and Clay Rockefeller, The Steel Yard operates on a 3.8-acre campus near the Moshassuck River. The site includes studio space where custom, functional public art is manufactured and a craft school that offers workshops on blacksmithing, welding and pottery.
“The founders and earliest members of our community created a place that would serve as a sponsor and catalyst for innovative and positive approaches to urban neighborhood revitalization, arts creation, advocacy and education, workforce development, and community growth,” the organization says on its web site.
The proposed sculpture would be the second art installation in the city commemorating Lincoln’s visit. An alloy plaque of roughly 3 feet by 4 feet is affixed to the entryway of City Hall, which is attached to Harris Hall – known as Harris Institute Hall back in Lincoln’s day. It was named for Edward Harris, a leading industrialist of early Woonsocket and its most philanthropic-minded benefactor.
The plaque explains the nature of Lincoln’s visit:
“Following his address at Cooper Union in New York,” it says, “he spoke in Providence and several New Hampshire cities. After visiting his son Robert at Phillips Exeter Academy, he continued his tour in Connecticut before returning to Rhode Island to speak in Woonsocket. This stop helped his party to win spring elections in New England and contributed to his election as president in November.”
While Lincoln was a rising star in the fledgling Republican party at the time of his campaign stop at Harris Institute Hall, he was not campaigning as a candidate for president – at least not officially. Indeed, there were already four other announced Republican contenders in the race for president.
Lincoln scholars and historians say he was mainly here to stump for other Republicans running for seats in Congress. But the political landscape was changing fast, and soon Lincoln would emerge as the party favorite for the nation’s highest office, and he was elected 16th president of the United States before the year was over.
According to the accounts of the day, several hundred supporters followed Lincoln to rally at Harris Hall, but historians disagree on what happened next. Some say he promptly boarded the train after the speech and returned to Providence. But others say he spent the night in Woonsocket at the Harris mansion known as “Oakley.”
—Spokesman Blake Collins