Samuel Gross (Calder)

Samuel Gross (1897) is a bronze statue by sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder, created as a monument to the American surgeon Dr. Samuel D. Gross (1805–1884). It was commissioned for and originally installed at the Army Medical School in Washington, D.C., on what is now the National Mall.

Samuel Gross
ArtistAlexander Stirling Calder
Year1897
TypeBronze
Dimensions280 cm × 120 cm × 91 cm (111 in × 48 in × 36 in)
LocationPhiladelphia
Coordinates39.94806°N 75.15825°W / 39.94806; -75.15825
OwnerThomas Jefferson University

In April 1970, it was relocated to the campus of Jefferson Medical College (now Thomas Jefferson University) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1] It currently stands on the Sidney and Ethal Lubert Plaza, within the square bordered by 10th, Walnut, 11th and Locust Streets.[2]

History
Statue in its original location, beside the Army Medical School in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Gross was considered the greatest American surgeon of his time, and trained more than a generation of surgeons at Jefferson Medical College.[3] He was the author of A Manual of Military Surgery (1861), the military field surgery manual used by the Union Army during the Civil War (and soon pirated by the Confederate Army).[4] He later served as president of the American Medical Association, and was a founder and the first president of the American Surgical Association.[5]

The formal proposal for a statue of Dr. Gross originated at the September 24, 1891 business meeting of the ASA.[6]:1535 By the end of 1892, more than $6,000 had been raised from members of the ASA and the Jefferson Medical College Alumni Association.[6]:1538 Members of the AMA also were solicited for contributions:

Mr. Geo. Keil of Philadelphia is in Chicago this week, representing the S. D. Gross Monument Fund, and will call on the leading members of the profession in this city. Twelve thousand dollars is the minimum amount required, and the raising of the amount should not be doubtful. Gentlemen desiring to anticipate Mr. Keil's visit may leave contributions for him at the JOURNAL office, if more convenient.[7]

Calder won the commission for the statue through an 1894 national design competition.[8] He based his likeness of Dr. Gross on photographs that his former teacher, Thomas Eakins, had taken in preparation for the 1876 painting, The Gross Clinic.[9] Other sculptors in the design competition included Charles Grafly and Samuel Murray, fellow former students of Eakins, with whom Eakins also shared copies of the negatives.[10]

Calder completed his larger-than-life-size plaster statue in Philadelphia, and it was shipped to Paris to be cast in bronze at the Jaboeuf & Bezout foundry.[1] Congress appropriated funds for the statue's pink granite base[11]—three square steps and pedestal, 108 in (270 cm) in height[1]—and the completed bronze was shipped to Washington, D.C. The monument was installed at the northeast corner of 9th Street and Independence Avenue, between the Army Medical School and the Smithsonian Institution Building.[5]

The monument's May 6, 1897 dedication was timed to coincide with the Washington, D.C. convention of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons.[12] President William McKinley spoke at the ceremony, as did Surgeon General of the U.S. Army George M. Sternberg, and William Williams Keen, Dr. Gross's former student and successor as Professor of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College, and America's first brain surgeon.[12] Dr. Gross's granddaughter and great-grandson unveiled the statue.[12]

Relocation

In preparation for excavation of the 9th Street Tunnel under the National Mall, the monument was removed and placed in storage in the late 1960s. The Army Medical Museum and Library (formerly the Army Medical School Building) was demolished in 1969, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (completed 1974) was built on its site.[5] In April 1970, the statue and its base were relocated to the campus of Jefferson Medical College, where Dr. Gross had gone to medical school and been Professor of Surgery for 28 years.[3]

Alexander Stirling Calder's statue of Samuel D. Gross, which Jefferson retrieved from the warehouses of the Federal Government in Washington, where it had been moved from the Mall during construction of an expressway underpass, was placed to the rear of the Scott Building some months ago. The real question is why Jefferson placed it overlooking the parking lot rather than on the Walnut Street front, as the architects suggested. One assumes that it is to relate eventually to an open area in the center of the block which would result if new construction proceeds along Eleventh and Locust Streets and parking is placed underground.[13]

Inscriptions

(Sculpture, Lower proper left side):

JABOEUF & BEZOUT FONDEURS A PARIS [a Founder's mark appears]

(Sculpture, Lower proper right side):

CALDER

(Granite base, front):

SAMUEL D. GROSS

American Physicians have erected
this statue to commemorate great deeds
of a man who made such an impress
on American surgery that it has served
to dignify American Medicine

1897[1]
gollark: I suppose we'd have to ignore 1-letter symbols - there are too many.
gollark: It's easy, too, what with the 2-letter symbols.
gollark: _will now do this_
gollark: I wonder if anyone collects periodic table codes.
gollark: _ponders accepting incuhatchable egg_

See also

References
  1. "Dr. Samuel Gross, (sculpture). SIRIS
  2. Samuel D. Gross, from Philadelphia Public Art.
  3. Samuel D. Gross, from Thomas Jefferson University.
  4. A Manual of Military Surgery, from Thomas Jefferson University.
  5. Dr. Samuel Gross Statue, from National Endowment for the Humanities.
  6. Mark M. Ravitch, A Century of Surgery: The History of the American Surgical Association, Volume 2 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1981).
  7. Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 21, no. 18 (October 28, 1893), p. 664.
  8. David Bernard Dearinger, "Alexander Stirling Calder," Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design (Hudson Hills Publishing, 2004), p. 83.
  9. Jed Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Time—The Early Years, 1898–1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), p. 34.
  10. Nanette Lederer Calder, Thoughts of A. Stirling Calder on Art and Life (Philadelphia: privately printed, 1947), p. 6.
  11. "Statue of Dr. Samuel D. Gross". Baltimore Sun. May 5, 1897. Retrieved 2010-12-27. ... the unveiling of the statue of Mrs Horwltz's father Dr Samuel D Gross The statue has been recently erected in the grounds of the Smithsonlan Institution ...
  12. "Personal" (PDF). The New York Times. May 2, 1897.
  13. Edward A. Teitelman, M.D., "Scott Library and Administration Building," Jefferson Medical College Alumni Bulletin, vol. 20, no. 3 (Spring 1971), p. 5.(PDF)


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