An very large ink and wash elevation of the Fulton Memorial by the architect Lawrence F. Peck submitted to the Robert Fulton Memorial Competition

Research
Ink and wash on paper.

Marks:
Inscribed bottom center:
PRINCIPAL ELEVATION
SCALE ONE INCH EQUALS EIGHT FEET

Inscribed on central monument:
ROBERT FULTON
BORN MDCCLXV
DIED MDCCCXV
ERECTED IN HIS HONOR AND IN MEMORY
OF HIS ACHIEVEMENTS BY THE PEOPLE
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ANNO DOMINI MCMX

Provenance:
From the Florence and Herbert Irving Collection

The present drawing is an original watercolor and ink proposal submitted by the New York architectural firm of Lawrence F. Peck for a competition in October of 1909 to design a monument dedicated to Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, to be erected in Riverside Park and serve as a water gate on the coast of upper Manhattan from 114^th Street to 116^th Street. 

Sixty-two designs were submitted by architectural firms across the nation in the preliminary competition, narrowed down to twenty for final consideration. From these, a select group comprising the top ten were “invited to make a more complete study and submit final drawings expressing their architectural ideas in a more thorough and explicit fashion.” Lawrence F. Peck was among those selected in this second round; the present drawing represents the principal elevation for the monument and other elevations in the extended scheme were published in the January 1912 issue of The Architectural Review. The competition was further reduced to a final five submissions with the architect H. Van Buren Magonigle named as the winner.  

Full research report available on request.