Grand Army Plaza

1892

Architects & Sculptors: John H. Duncan, Stanford White, Calvert Vaux, Frederick Law Olmstead, Frederick MacMonnies, William Rudolf O'Donovan, Thomas Eakins.
Address: 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn

Officially called the "Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch," that's one too many apostrophes for most New Yorkers, so we just drop two syllables and refer to the whole thing as "Grand Army Plaza." I love how this arch required input from a posse of sculptors, landscape designers, and architects to get built, but the result is quite a nice little counterpoint to Washington Square Arch in Manhattan--except for the endless zooming of cars around the plaza's traffic circle, of course. On this night, one of the light globes on the lower left of the shot is burnt out, but it's been subsequently replaced by the Parks Department. The fact that this type of maintenance actually occurs in New York on a daily basis is still a source of wonder to me even in 2017...because when I arrived in 1990, it was a whole different ball of wax. Well played, New York.