Greenough
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
HORATIO, an American sculptor; born in Boston, Mass., Sept. 6, 1805. He studied for two years at Harvard, and from 1825 spent the greater part of his life in Italy. His principal work was the colossal statue of Washington, in front of the National Capitol. Other important sculptures are Venus Victrix," and a his "Medora," "Venus Victrix," group of four figures, "The Rescue," for the purpose of placing which he returned to the United States in 1851. He died in Somerville, Mass., Dec. 18, 1852. GREEN RIVER (1) Rises in western Wyoming, flows S. E. into Colorado, and then S. W. and S. through Utah, joining the Grand river, a branch of of the Colorado, after a course of 750 miles. (2) Green river, Kentucky, rises near the center of the State, flows W. and N. W., passing near the Mammoth Cave, and crosses the N. boundary, entering the Ohio 9 miles above Evansville, Ind. It is about 350 miles in length; and is navigable for small steamers for 150 miles; its lower course is through the coal-fields of western Kentucky. At Tebb's Bend, on this river, a smart action of several hours took place, July 4, 1863, between a body of Confederate raiders under Morgan, the famous cavalry leader, and Michigan M about 200 coops under Colonel troops Moore, in which the former were repulsed with a loss of more than 200 killed and wounded. Moore, being intrenched, st only 6 killed and 23 wounded. DENSBORO, a city of North Carcity County-seat of Guilford co. It thern railroad. It has an important trade in tobacco, cotton, coal, and iron. Its industries include cottonmill supplies, cotton goods goods, saw-mill machinery, nery, furniture, fertilizers, etc. It is the seat of the Greensboro Female College, the State Normal and Industrial College for white women, the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for colored students, and the Bennett and Lutheran colleges for negroes. Its public buildings include a Masonic Home, a public library, several hospitals, and 2 parks. Pop. (1910) 15,895; (1920) 19,861.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's placed Greenough's colossal Washington "in front of the National Capitol" in 1921, but the statue had in fact left the grounds years earlier: mocked from the start as a half-naked Zeus in a toga, it was shifted from the Rotunda to the east lawn in 1843 and handed to the Smithsonian in 1908; it now stands indoors in the National Museum of American History. "The Rescue," the group he came home in 1851 to install, was taken from the Capitol's east steps during construction work in the 1950s, was damaged, and has never been put back — its subject, a frontiersman restraining an American Indian, is now read as a monument to conquest rather than heroism. The larger reversal is in Greenough's reputation: he is valued today less for the marble than for his essays arguing that a building or object should take its form from its function, an idea that made him a hero to twentieth-century modernists and put him in the ancestry of "form follows function."
Written for this edition, 2026.