Adolph Weinman

Adolph Alexander Weinman executed numerous architectural sculptures and was known for his association with Beaux-Arts projects—many by McKim, Mead & White. In Washington, D.C., his works include the sphinxes for the Scottish Rite Temple, figures for the Post Office building and the Straus Fountain, and the pediments for the National Archives and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. The range of Weinman’s work also includes the eagles for New York’s Pennsylvania Station; a statue for the American World War I Military Cemetery in Montfaucon, France; and the design of the 1916 dime and half-dollar. A neoclassicist, Weinman trained at the Cooper Union in New York and in the studios of both Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French and opened his own studio in Forest Hills, New York, in 1904. He served as president of the National Sculpture Society and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Academy. Among his many honors was the Saltus Award from the American Numismatic Society in 1920. Weinman’s papers are at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.