Places that Matter
Piccirilli Studio (site of)
Place Matters Profile
By Breanne Scanlon
The former Piccirilli studio housed a famed family of Italian immigrant stone carvers and sculptors.
While most New Yorkers are familiar with the artistic works of the Piccirilli Brothers, very few know their name or their story. Giuseppe Piccirilli and his six sons transported their sculpting and carving business from Italy to New York City in the late 19th century. Their works, which include the Maine Monument at Columbus Circle, the lions at the New York Public Library, the pediment of the New York Stock Exchange, and the Firemen's Monument in Riverside Park, have become enduring symbols of New York City for residents and visitors alike.
In 1887, sculptor and stone-carver Giuseppe Piccirilli moved from his home in Tuscany, Italy to New York City. He brought with him his wife, daughter, and six sons. He and his sons--Attilio, Furio, Ferrucio, Getulio, Masaniello, and Orazio--who were also trained in sculpting and stone carving, determined to continue the family sculpting and carving business they had started in Italy. Giuseppe and his three oldest sons, Ferruccio, Attilio, and Furio, first worked as stone carvers at Adler's Monument and Granite Works on East 57th Street in Manhattan. After working there for a year and a half, the Piccirillis saved enough money to open their own carving and sculpting studio in a rented stable on Sixth Avenue and 39th Street. In the early phases of American sculpture, relatively few sculptors possessed the training or ability to carve their compositions in marble or stone, and many sent their work abroad to be carved. The sculptor community in New York City was a relatively small one, and word of the Piccirillis' reputation as accomplished stone carvers and sculptors quickly spread. They built their business through carving commissions, but were later able to devote more time to their own original sculpture work.
The Piccirilli's arrival in the US coincided with the start of massive Italian immigration to this country. Many of their countrymen were subjected to vicious forms of prejudice and discrimination. As highly skilled artisans, the Piccirills escaped the worst of this. Their work was essential to the production of the era's monumental buildings and sculptures.
In 1890, Barbara Piccirilli, Giuseppe's wife, fell ill and doctors advised her to move to the country. The entire family moved to 142nd Street, near Willis Avenue, in the Bronx, which was still considered the country at that time. Giuseppe and his sons built two studios near their home. The studios were the largest artist studios in the U.S. when they were built. Each brother had his own working space, but they ate lunch together everyday, frequently entertaining visitors. Over the years, the Piccirillis hosted both groups of schoolchildren and many prominent figures in their studios, including Theodore Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia, who was a close family friend. It was in these studios that Piccirillis did their most important and well-known work.
Mary Shelley Carroll
On this site was the studio of the six Piccirilli brothers, master stone carvers whose works include the New York Public Library Lions, the Maine Memorial and the Washington Square Arch in New York City, and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. My husband grew up in the South Bronx not far from where the original studio was located. He became intrigued in later life to find out that among so many famous sculptures, the Lincoln Memorial had been carved just a few blocks away from where he lived. As an amateur art historian, and with me in tow, we began to research this story. We feel that it is a lost piece of American art history, and we also feel that it is something that the South Bronx community needs to know about and become engaged in learning of it.
The Piccirilli story is many things: it is a tale of immigrants coming to this country armed with their skills and their craftsmanship and their art. They worked for the most famous sculptors of the day, men who did not carve their own pieces. They brought them to these master craftsmen, who turned their clay models into sculptures like the Lincoln, the pediment of the New York Stock Exchange, the pediment of the U.S. House of Representatives. As artists, they did their own sculptures which dot our country. Some examples of their work are the Maine Monument at Columbus Circle, the Firemen's Memorial at 100th and Riverside and many pieces in private hands as well as in museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Though the physical building no longer exists, the street has been renamed Piccirilli Place to honor these six brothers, and we hope that the artistic life they laid down there 100 years ago might again flourish in the South Bronx.
This place exists only in the mind, through photographs and through some still alive people who visited there and were witnesses to these brothers' greatness.
(February, 2008)
