I Crawled Inside the Crumbling Monument

Back in 1999, the “Sailors and Soldiers” Civil War monument in Goodwin Park in Portsmouth, NH, was collapsing into itself. I know because, like an idiot, I took a flashlight and crawled inside through a hatch about the size of a microwave oven.

Installed in 1888, the original metal armatures that held the heavy hollow structure upright were completely eaten away. The base was bowed at the center, and the guts of the monument were a twisted mess of tar, cement, caulking compound, wooden buttresses, and rubber sealant. As our memory of the Civil War faded, so did our memorials. 

That’s what you get when you order a low-cost monument from a catalog. Outside the memorial, the collection of life-sized metal statues had seen better days. A metal minuteman with his rifle tilted drunkenly to one side. Bits of a sailor’s cap had eroded, and Lady Liberty at the top had cracks along her metal wrist that looked like a fresh scar. Every time it rained, water poured through the fissures in the surface of the monument, rotting the wooden timbers that prevented the structure from self-destructing.

So, why did I climb inside? Because my guide from Public Works didn’t stop me, I guess. I had an early version of a digital camera. And although these are awful photographs, I find it impossible to discard them.  

The monument at Goodwin Park has since been restored thanks to federal funds and private grants. The story of how we got the monument made of “white bronze,” and why it almost fell down is covered elsewhere on this website. But here, just for the heck of it, are the shots I took back then.