Major General Franz Sigel's statue was unveiled in 1907. The children and grandchildren of the late general fought over the comparative prominence each of them was to have at the unveiling. There were legal summonses. Accusations of 'big head' and other such epithets were used. There was a court fight. One group of relatives tried to get the unveiling postponed to a holiday, when more people would have been present. In the end, the ceremony went ahead. The sculptor is Karl Bitter. This is Bitter's only equestrian monument.
Karl Bitter
(b. 1867 Vienna – d. NYC 1915)
was born in Vienna and studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts before coming to the United States in 1889.He found work at an architecture firm. Many of his subsequent bas-relief sculptural works decorate large, architectural projects and buildings in New York City. Bitter provided sculpture for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Trinity Church in New York City. He carved an allegorical bas-relief 'The Spirit of Transportation' in 1895 for the Philadelphia Broad Street Station (moved to the 30th Street Station in 1933). He made sculptures for the Biltmore Estate, designed by his friend Richard Morris Hunt, for the Vanderbilts in Asheville, NC. Bitter was chief of sculpture for the Panama Pacific Exposition (1915) in San Francisco. At the same time, he designed the Pulitzer Fountain in front of New York City's Plaza Hotel (Grand Army Plaza, Fifth Avenue and 59th Street), but he died in an accident before it was installed. He designed the Henry Hudson Memorial Column and statue (Bronx, NY, Henry Hudson Memorial Park) commemorating the early Dutch explorer (also unfinished at his death). His chief student, Karl Heinrich Gruppe, finished the Henry Hudson work.
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1) Riverside Drive Map [26]
