Confederate Monument in Louisville

	Confederate Monument in Louisville
	U.S. National Register of Historic Places
	South view of monument
Location	Jct. of 2nd and 3rd Sts., Louisville, Kentucky
Built	1895
Architect	Ferdinand von Miller
Architectural style	No Style Listed
MPS	Civil War Monuments of Kentucky MPS
NRHP reference No.	97000689
Added to NRHP	July 17, 1997

The Confederate Monument in Louisville is a 70-foot-tall monument adjacent to and surrounded by the University of Louisville Belknap Campus in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Owned by the city of Louisville, the monument commemorates the sacrifice of Confederate veterans.

As with many monuments to the Confederacy, some community activists, such as Louisville's Reverend Louis Coleman, have called for the removal of the monument from such a prominent location due to its association with the history of civil rights abuses against African-Americans, however both the city and university oppose such proposals. In 2002, the University announced plans to add civil rights monuments around the statue as part of its redevelopment as "Freedom Park", but funding was not secured until late 2008.^[2]

History

Completed in 1895, the Confederate Monument in Louisville was built with funding from the Kentucky Women's Confederate Monument Association, costing $12,000. Its dedication was on May 6, 1895, done so quickly in order to coincide with the 29th Grand Army of the Republic annual reunion.^[3]

Initially, the monument was built away from the University's campus at 3rd and Shipp Streets, but was moved in 1954 when the Eastern Parkway viaduct over the campus was built.^[4] During the 1920s and 1940s there were plans to remove the monument for road construction, until public sentiment saved it. In fact, in 1947 Louisville mayor Charles P. Farnsley, a fighter for civil rights, took a gun and made a public announcement on his wishes to keep the monument where it was.^[5] In 2002 plans were initiated to make it part of a "Freedom Park", with trees transplanted from Civil War battlefields.^[6] On November 17, 2008, funding was approved for such a park, with the Kentucky state government using $1.6 million of federal funds and the university spending $403,000. Louisville sculptor Ed Hamilton has been selected to make a civil rights monument to counter the Confederate Monument; Hamilton has already made an Abraham Lincoln memorial statue in Louisville.^[5]^[7]

Description

It is located at the intersection of 2nd and 3rd Streets. It is the largest Civil War monument in Kentucky. It is built of granite, with the German Ferdinand von Miller-designed Confederate soldiers (an artillerist, a cavalryman, and an infantryman) made of bronze. The base had a diameter 48 feet when first established, but has been reduced. It was originally to be designed by Louisville sculptor Enid Yandell, but the fact that Yandell was a woman caused a scandal, and instead the monument was done by the Muldoon Monument Company.^[5]

It is currently owned by the city of Louisville.^[7]

The monument was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 17, 1997, one of sixty-one different Civil War-related sites in Kentucky so honored on the same day. Four other monuments are in Louisville/Jefferson County. The 32nd Indiana Monument and the Union Monument in Louisville were both in Cave Hill Cemetery, although the first is now at the Louisville's Frazier Museum to preserve it. John B. Castleman Monument is on Cherokee Circle in the Highlands, a block from Bardstown Road. The other, Confederate Martyrs Monument in Jeffersontown, is in Jeffersontown City Cemetery in Jeffersontown, Kentucky.