Alexander Dallas Bache
Monument
This monument to a grandson of Benjamin Franklin is the first collaboration between Richardson and F.L. Olmsted. Bache was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania (1828-1941) and superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey (1843-1867). During the Civil War Bache served on the U.S. Sanitary Commission with Olmsted. After Bache's death, C.P. Patterson, who worked for Bache, sent a sketch to Olmsted requesting his aid in erecting a monument to Bache. Initially, Patterson believed $5000 would be raised. When Olmsted was informed that only $2000 would be available he asked Richardson to prepare a design based on Patterson's sketch. Richardson's estimate for the work was $2,800. Patterson approved the design but asked that the cost be reduced. The monument was erected over Bache's grave between 1868 and 1869 in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Pruyn Monument
The commission for this monument came to Richardson in October 1881. Robert Hewson Pruyn (born in 1815), for whom the monument would be erected, did not die until the following year. His wife, Jane Ann Lansing Pruyn (1881-1886) is also buried here.
The Pruyn's were members of one of Albany's leading Dutch families. Robert Pruyn was corporation counsel for the city of Albany, a member of the Board of Alderman, and speaker of the New York Assembly. Abraham Lincoln appointed him second minister to Japan in 1861. After returning from Japan Pruyn served as President of the Natonal Commercial Bank and Trust Company of Albany.
The monument is in Albany Rural Cemetary, just a few miles from Richardson's other projects in Albany, the New York State House, Albany City Hall, and the Sard House. Richardson's grand stone stairway in the State House depicts famous people from Albany's past, including an ancestor of Robert's, J.V.L. Pruyn.
The monument, in a beautiful Victorian arboretum cemetery, would benefit from a cleaning of the carving in the polished pink granite.
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