Navy Yard Urns

History

Lafayette Square, a seven-acre park directly north of the White House, was part of Pierre Charles L'Enfant's original 1791 plan for Washington, D.C. Andrew Jackson Downing redesigned the square in 1851 and 1852, and his plans called for placing urns there. Because of the Civil War and other interruptions, most of Downing's ideas were not realized until the late 1800s and early 1900s. The first major addition to the square came in 1853, when an equestrian statue of President Andrew Jackson was installed.

More significant work happened between 1872 and 1873, which is when the two urns were put in place. Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson ordered the Washington Navy Yard to melt down cannons left over from the Civil War to create these decorative urns. The urns were modeled after vases that William Wilson Corcoran had brought back from Paris. Who originally designed them is not known for certain, though the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System notes that either Downing or Calvert Vaux might have been the designer.

The furnaces used to cast the urns at the Navy Yard were built by Adolph Cluss and had previously been used to make cannons during the war. Each urn stands five feet tall and four feet wide, is made of bronze, and resembles urns found at the Palace of Versailles. They feature classical figures and carry the inscription "Ordnance Department, U.S. Navy Yard, Washington D.C. 1872." Originally placed on granite bases among flower beds to the east and west of the Jackson statue, Robeson called them "extremely good examples of the work of government mechanics and workshops."

While these urns have decorative motifs, they are distinct from the Andrew Jackson Downing Urn, which was made in 1856 and now sits in the Enid A. Haupt Garden. In 1879, flowers were put into the urns, but they were later taken out. During the women's suffrage protests in 1919, a group of women burned printed speeches by President Woodrow Wilson in front of the White House. Instead of using a metal tub as a firepit, at least one protester started a fire inside one of the urns. Other protesters and security personnel quickly put it out.