A president was assassinated and The Inquirer spearheaded a memorial on this week in Philly history
Days after the country’s 25th chief executive became the third assassinated in office, Philadelphia pursued a memorial.
A sitting U.S. president once believed that good things happen here.
“There is no city I like to visit more than Philadelphia,” William McKinley exclaimed a few years after his 1897 inauguration, according to The Inquirer.
And days after the country’s 25th chief executive became the third assassinated in office, the city pursued a memorial.
The Inquirer led the charge.
Three days after the Republican president’s death on Sept. 14, 1901, the newspaper ran an editorial on its front page with the headline: “Let a Monument To McKinley Rise in Philadelphia.”
In “the most representative American city,” it read, “it is fitting that a shaft of enduring granite or marble should be reared to commemorate the life and rulership and martyr-like death of the President.”
It’s worth noting that the paper’s owner and publisher at the time — British-born James Elverson — described the paper as “steadily and vigorously Republican in its political policy,” according to a Wales-based newspaper archive.
The editorial called on fellow papers including The Public Ledger to join the crusade. It called on the city and a local bank to help land the landmark.
“Let a monument be erected in Fairmount Park by the people of Philadelphia,” it read.
The following day, Sept. 18, 1901, The Inquirer announced in another front-page editorial that it would contribute $1,000 (roughly $40,000 in today’s dollars) to the cause.
“He loved Philadelphia,” the editorial read, “He had good reason.”
The paper’s fundraising campaign garnered about $12,000 from across the city (nearly $400,000 today), and a monument committee raised another $32,000 from various donors and businesses.
The result was a 9-foot likeness of the fallen leader, with even his deepest features immortalized in bronze and set upon a granite base. It was unveiled on June 6, 1908. But instead of Fairmount Park, it landed on the apron of City Hall, where it still stands today.