The Column of Progress
The Column of Progress, suggested by Calder and planned in outline by Symmes Richardson, besides being beautiful symbol and remarkably successful in outline, was perhaps the most poetic and original of all the achievements of the sculptors here. It represented something new in being the first great column erected to express a purely imaginative and idealistic conception. Most columns of its kind had celebrated some great figure or historic feat, usually related to war. But this column stood for those sturdy virtues that were developed, not through the hazards and the excitements and the fevers of conquest, but through the persistent and homely tests of peace, through the cultivation of those qualities that laid the foundations of civilized living. Isidore Konti designed the frieze typifying the swarming generations, by Matthew Arnold called “the teeming millions of men,” and to Hermon A. MacNeil fell the task of developing the circular frieze of toilers, sustaining the group at the top, three strong figures, the dominating male, ready to shoot his arrow straight alit to its mark, a male supporter, and the devoted woman, eager to follow in the path of advance.