Eye Street Mall
From GWUEncyc
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The University Mall on Eye Street, N.W., next to the Foggy Bottom metro, was the first street closed under GW’s campus plan of 1970. Application to close the block was filed with the District of Columbia in February 1975. Application was approved in March 1979 (D.C. Law 2-124) and land ownership passed to the university. The city requires that GW maintain the area in perpetuity. It was dedicated May 16, 1980. It cost approximately $200,000, and was designed by VVKR Partnership, Alexandria, Virginia. The contractor was Ft. Myer Construction Corporation of Arlington and was managed by Edward M. Crough, Inc. of Rockville, Maryland.
The Sculpture: The likeness of George Washington is a four-foot high bust in bronze weighing approximately one ton. It rests atop a six-foot granite pedestal facing 23rd Street at the eastern end of the University Mall. At the time of its dedication, the bust was the only outdoor statue of George Washington on the GW campus. Two others have joined it, and another was donated by the university to the Mount Vernon estate in September 2003. (The Houdon statue of Washington was moved from Lisner Auditorium to the University Yard in 1991).
The Sculptor: Avard Fairbanks (1897-1987) was among the most distinguished American contemporary sculptors. Born in 1897 in Provo, Utah, he studied in the Art Students League in New York and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. He held a bachelor of fine arts degree from Yale, an M.F.A. from the University of Washington and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in anatomy from the University of Michigan. His career as a teacher of sculpture began in 1920, when he became assistant professor of art at the University of Oregon. He subsequently taught at the University of Michigan and went on to organize the College of Fine Arts at the University of Utah in 1947. He sculpted numerous statues of Abraham Lincoln, three of which are in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. Washingtonians are also familiar with four other examples of his work: the angel Moroni atop the Washington Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Washington suburb of Kensington, Maryland, and three statues at the U.S. Capitol - Northwest explorer and medical missionary Marcus Whitman representing Washington State, Wyoming suffragette Esther Hobart Morris and former North Dakota governor and U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Burke.
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Photographic Credit: n/a
Author or Source: RG0031/010; GW Times, Sept. 1980; Friday Report, May 9, 1980
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 21, 2006
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist
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