The Champlain tercentenary — Text and Context

ve an historical treatment of the important events occurring in the Champlain valley, nor of so wide a range of literary productions, as did the Tercentenary exercises, a record of which may be found in the First Report of this Commission. Nevertheless, the interchange of felicitations between the representatives of France and of this country, the cordial greetings everywhere extended to the French visitors and the amicable relations existing between the two peoples, prompting the warmest expressions of good will and generous impulses in addresses of rare literary quality, together with the dedicatory ceremonies themselves, are worthy a permanent record in this Final Report, thereby enlarging it into a volume, and are a fitting sequel to the historical Tercentenary Celebration.

The Commissioners fully realized the opportunity at Crown Point Forts for the construction and embellishment of a great Memorial Lighthouse to commemorate the advent of Samuel Champlain, the herald of civilization, into that valley, and they spared no pains to accomplish that result.

After examining some American memorials to Samuel Champlain and looking over the photographs of others and especially in view of the utilitarian character of the Crown Point memorial in the form of a Lighthouse and of its adaptability to sculptural embellishment, the Commissioners decided to undertake the production of such a Memorial after a design submitted by the architects, Messrs. Dillon, McLellan & Beadel of New York City, including a bronze statue group, the work of the sculptor, Carl Augustus Heber, of New York City. For three years, Mr. Heber was in the studios of Augustus St. Gaudens and Paul Bartlett in Paris and afterward worked on the embellishments of the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo under Karl Theodore Francis Bitter.

Among Heber’s more important works are the equestrian statue of General Sheridan at Somerset, Ohio; the statue of Franklin at Princeton University; the Schiller at Rochester, N. Y., the heroic statue “Roman Poet” in the Brooklyn Institute, and the bronze statue in St. Andrew’s Church at Stamford, Connecticut. He received a medal at the St. Louis Exposition for his “Pastoral” which is now in the museum of the Chicago Art Institute, and he won the Avery prize at the Architectural League in 1910.

Contracts were let to Booth Brothers and Hurricane Isle Granite Company for the construction of the Memorial Lighthouse on the property of the United States at Crown Point Forts of Fox Island granite according to the design found at pages 346-347 of the original Report of the Commission and for the bronze statue group after the Heber model, consisting of a bronze statue of Champlain with one of his soldiers crouching at his feet at one side and an Indian at the other. Just below the group is a conventionalized stone canoe prow laden with the products of the country. The work progressed as rapidly as was planned. The Fox Island granite came from the State of Maine and had to be delivered at Crown Point Forts, several miles distant from a railroad station. The memorial was practically completed on July 5, 1912, although the foundry work on the bronze statue group was not finished, but was in place before the close of navigation. The Commissioners are gratified that the entire memorial, including granite and bronze work, and architects’ fees, was completed within the contract price of approximately $51,313.83, and has been generally approved by the Governors of New York and Vermont and by all others who have passed judgment upon it. In the production of such memorials, where æsthetics must be combined with utilitarian purposes, not readily susceptible of artistic treatment, it is not to be determined _a priori_ from plans, what the result may be and especially when so much depends upon the location and landscape surroundings, as in the case of this memorial.