04/27/2026
On April 24, 1937, Cyrus Dallin's famous Paul Revere monument was unveiled...on the Charles River Esplanade?? Yes, you read that correctly! After 53 years of advocating for Boston to fulfill its promise, Dallin took matters into his own hands. With the help of his son Lawrence, he sculpted a full-size, heroic-scale model of the statue in clay at his own expense in his Arlington studio. The work took him four months to complete and required three tons of clay, some of which was hastily obtained by the sculptor’s devoted students at the Massachusetts School of Art.
Vittoria Dallin described the ordeal:
"For months he toiled, handling great quantities of clay, going up and down a ladder day after day, from morning till night, working with feverish intensity. The cost of such mental and physical exertion for a man in his late seventies was tremendous, and Cyrus Dallin was a mental and physical wreck after the huge model was completed."
The model was cast in plaster and finished with a bronze patina by P.P. Caproni and Brother. The unveiling on the Esplanade corresponded with the kick off of Boston Art Week and was attended by local officials, the governor, and hundreds of school children.
Over the next two years, the statue was exhibited in public spaces throughout the city until funding for the bronze was finally secured from the George Robert White Fund.
