This is the latest in a series of non-legal articles on the city we work in and love.
The environs around RPJ are home to many structures of interest but perhaps none more mysterious than the fifty-one-foot obelisk at the intersection of 25th and Broadway. Interred below the spire are the remains of General William Jenkins Worth and his monument is only one of two in Manhattan that also serve as mausoleum (the other being General Ulysses Grant's uptown). The monument was designed by James Goodwin Batterson, whose other work includes the United States Capitol and Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
General Worth, born 1794 in Hudson New York to Quakers, may be best known for "Worth's Battalion Orders" which remain inscribed in West Point's "Bugle Notes," the manual of plebe knowledge all cadets are required to memorize. Though Worth himself never graduated from the United States Military Academy, his words during his time as a fourth commandant of cadets (notably: "[b]ut an officer on duty knows no one") remain a call for standardized and equitable leadership for all those who pass through the Academy.
Worth jump started his military career following his enlistment during the War of 1812, where he was commissioned as a First Lieutenant the following year. Worth went on to be awarded the rank of Captain due to his valor during the Battle of Chippewa, where he sustained a grapeshot wound that would leave him disabled for the rest of his life. Worth solidified his legacy during the Mexican-American War of 1846, where he was given his final and highest rank of Major-General. He died of cholera in San Antonio in 1849.
The monument features decorative plaques honoring Worth's most significant career battle sites and is bracketed by further bronze plaques which depict the General (front) and dedicate the site to him (back). Given its location near the Flatiron Building, hundreds of residents, workers and tourists pass by the site every day. That a luminary of the Mexican-American war, whose name is not a household word, has arguably the most visited gravesite in all of New York City is one of those quirks that makes our town so fascinating.
Lucia Mead contributed to this article.
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