The River Horse | |
---|---|
Type | Bronze |
Location | Washington, D.C., United States |
38°53′58″N77°02′48″W / 38.899491°N 77.04678°W | |
Owner | George Washington University |
The River Horse is a bronze sculpture of a hippopotamus located on the campus of George Washington University. It is in front of Lisner Auditorium, at 21st Street and H Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C., in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. [1]
In 1996, George Washington University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg presented this bronze statue as a gift to the University's Class of 2000. The hippo stands with its mouth wide. Its nose is slightly worn due to passersby rubbing it. A plaque is placed on the base:
The hippopotamus is not native to North America. President Trachtenberg admitted he invented the story. He said that, for fun, he made up a story that George Washington watched hippos swim in the Potomac River. [3]
According to Mary V. Thompson, research Historian at the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, George Washington did explore the possibility of purchasing a piece of agricultural equipment known as a Hippopotamus, which he hoped would efficiently remove nutrient-rich soil from the Potomac to be used as fertilizer for his fields.
Mount Vernon is a census-designated place (CDP) and unincorporated community in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. The population was 12,416 at the 2010 census. Primarily due to its historical significance and natural recreation and beauty, the Mount Vernon area receives over one million tourists each year.
Mount Vernon is the former plantation of Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States George Washington and his wife, Martha. An American landmark, the estate lies on the banks of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia. It is located 15 miles south of Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia, and is across the river from Prince George's County, Maryland.
The George Washington University is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Chartered in 1821 by the United States Congress, GW is one of six universities in the United States with a congressional charter.
The Potomac Heritage Trail, also known as the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail or the PHT, is a designated National Scenic Trail corridor spanning parts of the mid-Atlantic region of the United States that will connect various trails and historic sites in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. The trail network includes 710 miles (1,140 km) of existing and planned sections, tracing the natural, historical, and cultural features of the Potomac River corridor, the upper Ohio River watershed in Pennsylvania and western Maryland, and a portion of the Rappahannock River watershed in Virginia. The trail is managed by the National Park Service and is one of three National Trails that are official NPS units.
Theodore Roosevelt Island is an 88.5-acre (358,000 m2) island and national memorial located in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, it was used as a training camp for the United States Colored Troops. The island was given to the federal government by the Theodore Roosevelt Association in memory of the 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt. Until then, the island had been known as My Lord's Island, Barbadoes Island, Mason's Island, Analostan Island, and Anacostine Island.
The George Washington Memorial Parkway, colloquially the G.W. Parkway, is a 25-mile-long (40 km) parkway that runs along the south bank of the Potomac River from Mount Vernon, Virginia, northwest to McLean, Virginia, and is maintained by the National Park Service (NPS). It is located almost entirely within Virginia, except for a short portion of the parkway northwest of the Arlington Memorial Bridge that passes over Columbia Island within the District of Columbia.
Clark Mills was an American sculptor, best known for four versions of an equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, located in Washington, D.C., with replicas in Nashville, Tennessee, Jacksonville, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Washington Monument is the centerpiece of intersecting Mount Vernon Place and Washington Place, an urban square in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood north of downtown Baltimore, Maryland. It was the first major monument begun to honor George Washington (1732–1799).
A lawn jockey is a statue depicting a man in jockey clothes, intended to be placed in front yards as hitching posts, similar to those of footmen bearing lanterns near entrances and gnomes in gardens. The lawn ornament, popular in certain parts of the United States and Canada in years past, was a cast replica, usually about half-scale or smaller, generally of a man dressed in jockey's clothing and holding up one hand as though taking the reins of a horse. The hand sometimes carries a metal ring and, in some cases, a lantern, which may or may not be operational.
Lawrence Washington was an American soldier, planter, politician, and prominent landowner in colonial Virginia. As a founding member of the Ohio Company of Virginia, and a member of the colonial legislature representing Fairfax County, he also founded the town of Alexandria, Virginia on the banks of the Potomac River in 1749.
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg was the 15th President of the George Washington University, serving from 1988 to 2007. On August 1, 2007, he retired from the presidency and became GW's President Emeritus and University Professor of Public Service at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
StudioEIS is a sculpture and design studio in Brooklyn, New York, United States. It specializes in classical figurative sculpture and visual storytelling with production in bronze, stone, and resin for exhibitions at cultural institutions, museums, and corporations worldwide.
Lisner Auditorium is a performance venue sited on the Foggy Bottom campus of George Washington University at 730 21st Street Northwest, Washington, D.C. Named for Abram Lisner (1852-1938), a university trustee and benefactor whose will provided one million dollars towards its construction, it was designed in 1940 and completed in 1946. Constructed in the stripped classicist style of the late Art Deco and host to major classical, folk, rock, blues, opera, and theatrical performances over the decades, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 for its dual significance as an architectural work and as a performance venue.
George Washington is a statue by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon from the late 18th century. Based on a life mask and other measurements of George Washington taken by Houdon, it is considered one of the most accurate depictions of the subject. The original sculpture is located in the rotunda of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, and it has been copied extensively, with one copy standing in the United States Capitol Rotunda.
Major General George Henry Thomas, also known as the Thomas Circle Monument, is an equestrian sculpture in Washington, D.C. that honors Civil War general George Henry Thomas. The monument is located in the center of Thomas Circle, on the border of the downtown and Logan Circle neighborhoods. It was sculpted by John Quincy Adams Ward, best known for his work on the statue of George Washington in Wall Street, Manhattan. Attendees at the dedication in 1879 included President Rutherford B. Hayes, Generals Irvin McDowell, Philip Sheridan, and William Tecumseh Sherman, senators and thousands of soldiers.
Brevet Lt. General Winfield Scott is an equestrian statue in Washington, D.C., that honors career military officer Winfield Scott. The monument stands in the center of Scott Circle, a traffic circle and small park at the convergence of 16th Street, Massachusetts Avenue and Rhode Island Avenue NW. The statue was sculpted by Henry Kirke Brown, whose best-known works include statues of George Washington in New York and Nathanael Greene in Washington, D.C. It was the first of many sculptures honoring Civil War generals that were installed in Washington, D.C.'s traffic circles and squares and was the second statue in the city to honor Scott.
The Arts of War and The Arts of Peace are bronze, fire-gilded statue groups on Lincoln Memorial Circle in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Commissioned in 1929 to complement the plaza constructed on the east side of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the Arlington Memorial Bridge approaches, their completion was delayed until 1939 for budgetary reasons. The models were placed into storage, and the statues not cast until 1950. They were erected in 1951, and repaired in 1974.
Lund Washington (1737–1796) was a distant cousin of George Washington who served as steward of the Mount Vernon estate during the American Revolution.
A colossal bust of Abraham Lincoln was made by Gutzon Borglum and completed in 1908. The original marble sculpture is installed in the United States Capitol crypt, in Washington, D.C. Reproductions cast in bronze are installed in several other locations, including the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, Illinois.
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