Newark, New Jersey: Located at the southern gateway to Military Park in Downtown Newark is the ‘Wars of America’ memorial by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of the ‘Seated Lincoln’ memorial at the Essex County Courthouse as well as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota. Wars of America, which features two horses and 42 soldiers, “was one of the last great public projects completed before the Great Depression of 1929,” according to the Newark Public Library, and “is dedicated to the soldiers, sailors and marines of four American wars: the Revolution, Civil, Spanish-American and the Great War.”
The sculpture, the creation of which was funded by Newark furniture store owner Amos H. Van Horn, was dedicated during a ceremony attracting 14,000 Newarkers on Memorial Day of 1926, according to the library. A National Park Service (NPS) form by Zakalak Associates states that “the citizens of Newark had waited many years beyond the promised completion date, but they all agreed that the statute made the waiting worthwhile.”
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