Walloon Settlers Monument at Battery Park

Artist: Henry Bacon

Collection: Art in the Parks - NYC Department of Parks and Recreation

Date: Dedication, May 20, 1924

This nearly ten-foot-tall granite stele at the northwest corner of Battery Park by Castle Clinton was designed by noted architect Henry Bacon (1866–1924). The monument and its gilded inscription commemorates the Walloon Settlers, a group of 32 Belgian Huguenot families who joined the Dutch in 1624 on the ship Nieu Nederland (“New Netherland”) to colonize New Amsterdam, in what is now called the island of Manhattan. Architect Bacon also designed Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial (1911-22) and Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Pool (1922).