On May 7, 2014, Bill Tyre, Executive Director and Curator at Glessner
House Museum, and Robert Furhoff and John Waters, members of the House and
Collections Committee, visited the Ames Monument in southeast Wyoming. The monument is the only work of H. H.
Richardson west of St. Louis and is probably his least visited site, due to its
remote location off Interstate 80 between Cheyenne and Laramie.
The monument was commissioned by the Union Pacific Railroad to
commemorate the efforts of brothers Oakes and Oliver Ames in the construction
of the Transcontinental Railroad. That
extraordinary engineering feat was the result of the Pacific Railway Act of
1862, signed by Abraham Lincoln, who considered it one of the most important
acts of his presidency. Little work was
made on the railroad during the Civil War, but in 1865 Lincoln turned to his
friend Oakes Ames, a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and the
Congressional Committee on Railroads, to oversee its completion. Oliver Ames served as president of the Union
Pacific Railroad during construction. The
Ames brothers, who had made their fortune manufacturing shovels, contributed
over one million dollars of their own money and raised another $1.5 million
from friends and colleagues. The
railroad was finished in four years and its completion was celebrated with the
driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit in Utah on May 10, 1869. Oakes Ames died in 1873 and Oliver Ames in
1877.
The construction of the monument was approved by stockholders of the
Union Pacific Railroad in 1875, but no action was taken until late 1879 when H.
H. Richardson was engaged as architect.
His selection was most appropriate as he had already designed two
buildings for the Ames family in North Easton, Massachusetts - the Oliver Ames
Free Library (1877-1879) and the Oakes Ames Memorial Town Hall (1879-1881).
The site selected for the monument was at
Sherman, Wyoming, 300 feet south of the highest elevation of the Union Pacific
railroad line, at 8,247 feet above sea level.
(In 1901, the railroad tracks were moved to a lower elevation three
miles to the south and the town of Sherman was abandoned).
Norcross Brothers was awarded the construction contract and work began
in 1880. A compound was built in Sherman
to accommodate the 85 workers who spent the next two years completing the
memorial. (Supposedly no gambling or
drinking was allowed).
The source of the
granite was Reeds Rock, located one half mile to the west. The granite blocks, some of which weighed up
to 20 tons, were skidded to the site by draft animals, and wooden cranes were
used to hoist them into place. The total
cost was just under $65,000.
The monument stands 60 feet tall and is 60 feet wide at the base, where
the walls are 10 feet thick. The
structure is designed in two parts. In
the lower half, the stone is laid in random ashlar, i.e. the stones are of
varying heights. In the upper portion,
the stones are coursed ashlar, where the stones are of the same height within
each course.
Oakes Ames
Oliver Ames
The upper portion contains
two stone bas relief medallions each nine feet in height, designed by Augustus
Saint-Gaudens. The east façade features
a portrait of Oakes Ames, and the west façade features a portrait of Oliver
Ames. The north face features a simple
inscription, in one-foot tall letters which reads IN MEMORY OF OAKES AMES AND
OLIVER AMES.
Frederick Law Olmsted praised the monument and its setting, and
architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, writing in 1934, stated that
it was among Richardson’s best works and one of the very finest memorials in
the country.
The monument with John Waters at left (for scale)
The monument is beautifully maintained by Wyoming State Parks and
Cultural Resources which has also installed informative interpretive panels at
the site.
(Contemporary photos taken May 7, 2014 by Bill Tyre and John Waters).
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