Eagle Feathers #223 – Border Crossing

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

The City of Somerville has much more in common with the Town of Arlington than the bordering Alewife Brook and their ongoing athletic rivalries. In 1842, when Somerville broke away from Charlestown, a large section of her land was seeded to Arlington making them geographic blood brothers. Vaguely measured, this area ran from Broadway to the Mystic River and west to Arlington’s Morningside border with Winchester.

One intriguing relationship with the two communities was between a world-renowned Arlington sculptor, Cyrus Dallin, and a Somerville family of bronze founders, the T.F. McGann & Sons Company.

The Mc Gann’s also had Arlington roots. Their Vine Street company created life-sized and colossal statuaries, busts, reliefs, and war memorials in dozens of cities and towns. Their creations are found in parks, public buildings, cemeteries, bridges, and museums across the northeast. They honored soldiers, sailors and civilians and the Smithsonian’s database has tracked nearly 75 of their municipal monuments. Some of their works were in Somerville’s own back yard.

• The Spanish War Monument in front of Somerville’s main library.
• The former Wilson Memorial Fountain on the Central Hill Concourse.
• The landmark Elk Statue which was at the corner of Highland Avenue at Central Street now resides at the Wakefield Elks Lodge overlooking Route 128.

Cyrus Dallin, a famous American sculptor who grew up in the hills of Utah, made Arlington Heights his home. He created more than 260 works, many of them Native American commemorations. A sculpture created by Dallin and founded by T.F. McGann & Sons lies near the entrance of Arlington’s Town Hall.

It is a handsome flag pole with a seven-foot-high sculptured base made with four interlocking statues. Squaw Sachem, the Pawtucket Native American woman who at one time owned what is now Arlington and Somerville, is one of them. Another Dallin statue, Appeal to the Great Spirit, greets visitors to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Dallin’s passion, which eluded him for almost 50 years, was to create a public effigy of Paul Revere. Early on, a suggested location was at the top of Broadway on Winter Hill where Revere rode by at full gallop. For the same reason, another proposal was at the front of Arlington High School on Massachusetts Avenue but lack of funding denied both those locations until Boston agreed to fund it.

Its current location near the Old North Church and Paul Revere’s house was spot-on. After waiting almost a half century, Cyrus Dallin got his sculpture and the T.F. McGann & Sons Company got its most famous foundry job.