Monument Square

Monument Square

Monument Square Photographs by Sterling Vernon
Junction of Main, Blackstone, and Social sts.

Monument Square is the northernmost of the three street nodes—Monument, Depot, and Market squares—which mark the ends and middle of an angled Main Street, in what was a nice urban sequence of open space / corridor / open space /corridor / open space. The corridors are now sadly gutted by demolition and neglect, although the revival of Main Street is presently a city goal. The 1870 Civil War memorial (by the Hartford sculptor J. G. Batterson) at the center of Monument Square was the first erected in the state. At 14–22 Monument Square is the Stadium–Costa Building, a combined theater-store-office complex commissioned by Arthur Darman (1926, Perry and Whipple). In the lobby, Dutch tiles and a mural, The Progress of Woonsocket, by Maurice Compris, provide the introduction to the well-preserved Neo-Renaissance fantasy of the theater.

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