Thank you to the women of The Most Blessed Sacrament Church for allowing me the opportunity to speak.

Inside Beacon Hill State House Bela Pratt / Sculptor Bronze / Granite


With its tender caress, the sculptured War Nurses rightfully represent all nurses, in all wars, a moving masterpiece.

Built largely of Pavonazzo marble this room houses Nurses’ Hall because of the statue of an Army war nurse located here. Sculpted in 1914 by Bela Pratt, it was the first statue erected in honor of the women of the North after the Civil War.

Pratt traveled to Paris, where he trained with sculptors Henri- Michel-Antoine Chapu(1833-1891) and Alexandre Falguière .

In 1892, he returned to the United States to create two large sculptural groups representing The Genius of Navigation for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He also produced sculptures for the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901. In 1893, he began a 25-year career as an influential teacher of modeling in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

During this time, Pratt sculpted a series of busts of Boston’s intellectual community, including Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks (1899, Brooks House, Harvard University), Colonel Henry Lee (1902, Memorial Hall, Harvard University), and Boston Symphony Orchestra founder Henry Lee Higginson (1909, Symphony Hall, Boston).

He became an associate of the National Academy in 1900.
When Saint-Gaudens’ uncompleted group for the entrance to the Boston Public Library was rejected, Pratt was awarded a commission for personifications of Art and Science. Pratt continued Saint-Gaudens’ influence in coin design after 1907. His gold Indian Head half ($5) and quarter ($2.50) eagles are known as the “Pratt coins” and feature an unusual intaglio Indian head, the U.S. mint’s only recessed design in circula- tion. A retrospective exhibition of 125 of his sculptures was held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the spring of 1918. 


"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Faneuil Hall Book Store, Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores. 

Spring / Summer Talk Schedule 2014 for "Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" Book

April 29 2014 at 7:30 PM IN THE MOST BLESSED SACREMENT CHURCH HALL LOCATED ON 1155 MAIN STREET, WAKEFIELD MA.



MAY 2, 2014 AT THE DIAMOND SCHOOL LEXINGTON, MA AT 1:00 PM


JULY 3, 2014 AT THE SHERATON BOSTON HOTEL BACK BAY BOSTON,  MA. AT THE ANNUAL MENSA SOCIETY GATHERING 12;00 PM

"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Faneuil Hall Book Store, Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores. 

Poe is Back In Boston This October 4, 2014. (Reprinted news article)

The tale has been years in the making, but it appears the fate is set for a public sculpture in Boston of native son Edgar Allan Poe.

The horror master who conjured creepy classics such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven” criticized Boston writers during his time here in the 1800s. And they reciprocated in earnest.

A sculpture of Edgar Allan Poe, the horror master who conjured creepy classics such as “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Raven.” It will be unveiled on Oct. 4. at at the intersection of Charles and Boylston Streets. (Courtesy Stefanie Rocknak)

Even so, a lot of people, including Boston College literature professor Paul Lewis, have spent years ardently defending Poe’s roots.

Lewis chairs the Poe Foundation of Boston, which has been orchestrating fundraising efforts for the $225,000 project. The campaign to memorialize the Victorian author’s connections to Boston with a public artwork began in 2009. Now Lewis says it’s great to have arrived at this point in the notoriously long process.

“The level of support we’ve received from the city, from donors large and small, demonstrates that Bostonians are ready — finally — to embrace Poe,” Lewis remarked, making sure to point out Poe was born in Boston in 1809*.

A $10,000 grant from the Lynch Foundation cemented the project’s destiny. It also received money from the city of Boston through the Edward Ingersoll Browne Trust Fund. Modern horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha contributed to the project as well, along with local businesses and private citizens/fans of the macabre.

Artist Stefanie Rocknak’s bronze sculpture titled, ‘Poe Returning to Boston,’ was chosen from a pool of 265 proposals. (Courtesy Paul Lewis/Poe Foundation of Boston)

Artist Stefanie Rocknak’s bronze sculpture, titled “Poe Returning to Boston,” is being fabricated at New England Sculpture Services in Chelsea. Her design was chosen from a pool of 265 proposals.

“I hope that Boston will enjoy this tribute to Poe for years to come,” Rocknak wrote in an email. She also added an update on the process. “The sculpture is now being cast (in pieces). After all these pieces are cast, the foundry will start to reassemble them–this should happen in a couple of months. After it is completely assembled, the patina will be applied.”

Rocknak looks forward to the day her striding figure will be secured in its final resting place at the intersection of Charles and Boylston streets. The unveiling is set for Oct. 4, just three days before the 165th anniversary of the writer’s death.

"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores. 

Why Banish Monuments; American Sculptures!

Just recently the "Triumph of Civic Virtue" a statue in New York City was moved to a cemetery in that same city. The reasoning for this banishment of the carrara marble monument was " it depicts sexist imagery about women".

The statue created in 1922 was originally depicting a representation of victory of Civic Virtue, symbolized by a naked muscular man, stepping on vice and corruption represented by two naked mermaids not women. Today an interpretation by a New York City politician stated that this statue was sexist and demeaning to women. The two female figures are mythological Roman or Greek mermaids, not women. This is a blatant misinterpretation of the meaning of this beautiful carrara sculpture.

Current, moral perceptions of women being preyed upon by men now or in the past is misleadingly read into this 1922 sculpture.

These forms beneath the ideological "Civic Virtue" are not women but sirens, mermaids of danger corruption. The message of the "Triumph of Civic Virtue" over vice and corruption is still relevant in our society today, especially to those public servants residing in New York City or any American city.

Another monument in Central Park, "J. Marion Sims" statue 1892, father of modern gynecology, who more recently was found to have experimented on female slaves, maybe banished as well.

I believe if we keeping judging these human events or leaders of our past carved in stone or shaped in bronze, we will surely banish a lot more historical leaders. Some great art and sculpture will be also in danger, much like book burning in the past American and  European history.

Monuments of men and women, leaders in their various fields, are mentors who must be emulated for their good and positive characteristics not their faults. It is their faults that make them human. We as people must see the difference. Banishment is not the answer in this case.

"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores. 

March Madness; A Monument to "Red" Auerbach Boston Celtics one of the most winning coaches ever!

Arnold “Red” Auerbach

Quincy Market / Faneuil Hall Lloyd Lillie, Sculptor Bronze

The one of the most-winning coaches with the longest history of success in any professional sport, another first for Boston, is shown sitting on a bench in Quincy Marketplace.

Arnold “Red” Auerbach took his place among the historical figures of New England on September 20, 1985, his 68th birthday, when a life-sized statue of him was unveiled at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. The sculpture dedicated by the Red Auerbach Fund, a group Red established in 1985 to promote athletic, recreational and other youth activities throughout Massachusetts; depicts the legendary coach of the Boston Celtics sitting at the end of a bench, holding a rolled up booklet in one hand and a trademark cigar in the other. To the left of the bench is a plaque that reads:
Inspirational Leader of the Boston Celtics

As an outstanding coach and General Manager he helped bring 15 World Championships to Boston. A member of the Hall of Fame, he has exceeded every record for consistent sports achievement. When measured against all standards of success, Red Auerbach stands alone for directing the Boston Celtics to more championships than any other team in any sport. He has made the name of Boston synonymous with winning. As coach of the Celtics from 1950 to 1966, Auerbach won nine NBA titles, including eight straight from 1959 to 1966 -- the longest consecutive string of championships in the history of North American professional sports. After retiring from coaching, he continued to serve as the general manager or president of the Celtics from 1966 until 1997, and again as president from 2001 until his death in 2006.

Prior to joining the Celtics, the Jewish kid from Williamsburg, Brooklyn whose nickname was derived from his fiery hair, earned his stripes as a player at George Washington University (where his season ticket seat is still colored red, contrasting with the blue of the rest of the arena), coached the Washington Capitols to two division titles in 1947 and 1949, briefly coached Duke University, and the Tri-Cities Blackhawks.

In 1980 he was named the greatest coach in the history of the NBA by the Professional Basketball Writers Association of America. He was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1979 and the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1996. He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969.

"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores. 

Anne Hutchison Banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony March 22,1638

Cyrus E. Dallin, Sculptor
Bronze / Granite

Mother of 15 children, herbalist , midwife, theologian and brilliant religious speaker and thinker was shutdown by Governor John Winthrop as well as 13 secular and religious leaders including Rev. John Cotton of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In front of the West and East wings of the State House are twentieth century memorials to seventeenth century strong-minded ladies, who grievously disturbed the peace of Boston in their time. Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), who arrived in Boston in 1634, so vigorously expounded a ‘covenant of grace’ that she was within three years tried for ‘traducing the ministers and their ministry’ and banished from the church and colony. In 1638 she emigrated to Rhode Island, and in 1642 to Pelham Bay in the Bronx, where she was killed by Indians.

Cyrus E. Dallin (1861-1944) represented her standing, with her small daughter by her side, her left arm clasping a Bible to her breast, and her face uplifted. His bronze statue, given to the Commonwealth in 1922 by the Anne Hutchinson Memorial Association and the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, was placed outside the West Wing that was added to the State House in 1914-17. (Whitehill, 97) 

Charles Bulfinch; Bostons' and Americas' Architect; his bronze monument resides in our Massaschusetts State House.

Charles Bulfinch

Inside Beacon Hill State House Bronze plaque by Herbert Adams, 1899 Commissioned by the Commonwealth.

Bulfinch’s first building was the Hollis Street Church (1788). Among his other early works are a memorial column on Beacon Hill (1789), the first monument to the American Revolution; the Federal Street Theater (1793); the “Tontine Crescent” (built 1793–1794, now demolished), fashioned in part after John Wood’s Royal Crescent; the Old State House in Hartford Connecticut (1796); and the Massachusetts State House (1798).

Over the course of ten years, Bulfinch built a remarkable number of private dwellings in the Boston area, including Joseph Barrell’s Pleasant Hill (1793), a series of three houses in Boston for Harrison Gray Otis (1796, 1800, 1806), and the John Phillips House (1804). He built several churches in Boston, of which New North Church (built 1802–1804), currently the Saint Stephens Church, is the last standing.

Serving from 1791 to 1795 on Boston board of selectmen, he resigned due to business pressures but returned in 1799. From 1799 to 1817 he was the chairman of Boston’s board of selectmen continuously, and served as a paid Police Superintendent, improving the city’s streets, drains, and lighting. Under his direction, both the infrastructure and civic center of Boston were transformed into a dignified classical style. 


Bulfinch was responsible for the design of the Boston Common, the remodeling and enlargement of Faneuil Hall (1805), and the construction of India Wharf (1803-1807). In these Boston years he also designed the Massachusetts State Prison (1803); Boylston Market (1810); University Hall for Harvard University (1813–1814); the Meeting House in Lancaster, Massachusetts (1815–17); and the Bulfinch Building of Massachusetts General Hospital (1818), its completion overseen by Alexander Paris, who was working in Bulfinch’s office at the time the architect was summoned to Washington by President Monroe.

In the summer of 1817, Bulfinch’s roles as selectman, designer and public official coincided with a visit by President Monroe. The two men were almost constantly in each other’s company for the week-long visit, and a few months later (1818) Monroe appointed Bulfinch the successor to Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820) as Architect of the Capitol in Washington,D.C. (The Capitol Building had been partially burned by the British in 1814.) In this position he was paid a salary of $2,500 per year plus expenses.

As Commissioner of Public Building, Bulfinch completed the Capitol’s wings and central portion, designed the western approach and portico, and constructed the Capitol’s original low wooden dome to his own design (replaced by the present cast-iron dome in the mid-1850s). In 1829 Bulfinch completed the construction of the Capitol, 36 years after its cornerstone was laid. During his interval in Washington, Bulfinch also drew plans for the State House in Augusta, Maine (1829–32). He returned to Boston in 1830, where he died on April 15, 1844, aged 80, and was buried in Kings Chapel Burial Ground in Boston. His tomb was later moved to Mount Auburn in Cambridge, MA.