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The Maine Monument
also adorns Columbus Circle, and is dedicated to the 260 "valiant
seamen who perished in the [American battleship] Maine by fate unwarned in
death unafraid" in 1898.
At the entrance of Merchants'
Gate, the main gateway into Central Park, stands the colossal marble
statue and fountain of the Maine Monument. A powerful 1913 Beaux Arts
monument to commemorate the controversial sinking of the battleship Maine
in 1898 and created in a 1901 design contest
sponsored by a Spanish-American War commission vice-chaired by media
magnate William Randolph Hearst who had a driving interest in promoting
the cause. It is a massive 44-foot limestone pylon, crowned at the top
with a gilded bronze sculpture of Columbia Triumphant in a seashell
chariot pulled by three hippocampi, sea horses that signifies the United
States' dominance of the seas. At the pylon's base, surrounding the ship
are the mythological
figures, Victory, Peace, Courage, Fortitude and Justice. Though the
destruction of the Maine as it sank in the harbor of Havana, Cuba claiming
the lives of 266 seamen, was later revealed to be a terrible accident the
popular jingoistic slogan, "Remember the Maine" lives on.
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