British Memorial Garden

By Maurice Chittenden, London Sunday Times, 4 July 2004

Three blocks away, British expatriates are planning in a few weeks’ time to unseat a statue of one of the first Dutch mayors of the city to make way for a public park to commemorate the British dead. Quarrying began in Caithness and Morayshire last week to produce the paving stones that will create a map of the British Isles as a base for the garden. It will be surrounded by topiary trees and flowers propagated from seeds brought by the Princess Royal from Hampton Court Palace.

Illustration from the Sunday Times article

At the southern end of the “map” will stand a new edifice. Anish Kapoor, the award- winning British artist, will create a 20ft high monolith called Unity to mark the special relationship between Britain and the United States. Ironically, the garden is to be sited in Hanover Square, close to Wall Street and named in the 18th century after the royal family whose rule was subsequently overthrown in the American war of independence.

“I knew as soon as I walked into the square that it was right, even before I knew its history,” said Camilla Hellman, the New York-based businesswoman from Henley-on-Thames who came up with the idea of a memorial which will also serve as a focus for Remembrance Day parades for New York’s 200,000 British. “It felt like an English square.”

The New York parks department agreed to hand over the plot to British designers, gardeners and artists. A water wheel with blades made from Welsh slate will sit in the centre of the park, which will take up three-quarters of an acre of the Big Apple’s precious real estate.

Peggy Brown, of the Friends of the British Memorial Garden, said: “We hope to dedicate the garden on Remembrance Day next year. We don’t want to be in competition with ground zero. That is sacred ground for the Americans.”

Kapoor, who won the Turner prize in 1991, has found a 60-ton block of black granite in Zimbabwe that will form the basis of his sculpture. It will be shipped to Tuscany for him to work on before being ferried to New York. He plans to hew out the centre of the block to create an inner chamber so highly polished that it will have a mirrored surface. “The chamber will reflect light so as to form a column which will hover, ghost-like, in the void of the stone,” he said.

“The stone will appear to create within itself a reflection akin to an eternal flame.”

The dead from September 11 will be honoured in 67 finials on railings flanking one side of the garden. They will be emblazoned with the country motifs for each victim: rose for English, daffodil for Welsh, thistle for Scottish, flax for Northern Irish.

It was the biggest British death toll in any single terrorist attack. More Britons died than people of any other nationality except American.

Charles Wolfe, an American businessman whose Welsh wife Katherine was killed in the attack while working for Marsh & McLennan, an insurance group, said: “The 9/11 attack was so public that the healing process is so different from losing someone in something like a car crash.

“The memorial garden is a very nice idea that will help with that process and help maintain my connection to Britain.”

New York Memorial for 9/11 Britons