DVORAK IS BACK

IN STUYVESANT SQUARE,
HIS HISTORIC MANHATTAN
NEIGHBORHOOD

The Dvorák monument
bronze sculpture
restored on its new green granite
pedestal
Photo by Reinhold Behringer

THIS SPLENDID STATUE
OF THE GREAT COMPOSER
IS BACK IN THE PARK HE
KNEW SO WELL

Dvorak House

For lack of an Appropriate site, this life-size bronze monument to Antonin Dvorák, the work of the celebrated sculptor Ivan Mestrovic (1883-1962) and the property of the New York Philharmonic, has for nearly three decades languished in undeserved obscurity on the roof of the orchestra's Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.
In February 1991 the landmark designation of Dvorák's residence (sketach at left), on East 17th Street just off Stuyvesant Square Park, gave promise that the statue would finally find a suitable outdoor home, within sight of the house where the great Czechoslovakian composer wrote the beloved "New World" Symphony, his tribute to the music of America, as well as the incomparable Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, the Biblical Songs, and many other masterpieces. Sadly, the New York City Council, by a slim majority, subsequently overturned the landmark designation of the house, built in 1852. Its owner since 1989, Beth Israel Hospital, destroyed it in August 1991.
In September 1997, the Philharmonic's gift of the statue to the Dvorák American Heritage Association was finally placed in the landmarked park that the composer strolled through every day of his life in New York in the 1890s, when he was in the full flower of his musical genius.

This information is brought to you by DVORÁK American Heritage Association
In collaboration with Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association

You can help support this cause by sending contributions to:

Dvorák
P. O. Box 332, Cooper Station
New York N. Y. 10276

Please make check payable to:
Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association
(Abbreviation "S.P.N.A." is permissible)
Check MUST specify Dvorák Statue Fund

Please include your name, address and phone number.

"Monuments are a necessity, for they depend strictly on sentiment.
And any nation devoid of sentiment cannot survive."
--President Woodrow Wilson, one of the fathers of
the modern nation of Czechoslovakia after World War I

Return to Preserve & Protect

This page last revised Dec 6 1997
by David Goldfarb

Dvorák's Serenade for 10 Wind Instuments sequenced by Reinhold Behringer by permission of R. Behringer