The executive committee in New York was composed of Chevalier C. Barsotti, president; C. A. Barattoni and E. Spinetti, vice-presidents; G. Starace, treasurer; E. Tealdi and G. N. Malferrari, secretaries; of the presidents of the Italian societies of New York, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Hoboken; and of sixty-five members chosen from the subscribers as trustees.
Richard M. Hunt, John Lafarge, Augustus St. Gaudens, L. P. di Cesnola, and Robert J. Hoguet of the Sub-Committee on Art of the New York Columbian Celebration, awarded on September 1, 1892, the prizes offered for designs for an arch to be erected at the entrance to Central Park at Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue.
The committee chose, from the numerous designs submitted, four which were of special excellence. That which was unanimously acknowledged to be the best was submitted with the identification mark, "Columbia," and proved to be the work of Henry B. Hertz of 22 West Forty-third Street. Mr. Hertz will receive a gold medal, and the arch which he has designed will be erected in temporary form for the Columbian celebration in October, 1892, and will be constructed as a permanent monument of marble and bronze to the Genius of Discovery if $350,000 can be secured to build it. The temporary structure is estimated to cost $7,500.
The design which the committee decided should receive the second prize was offered by Franklin Crosby Butler and Paul Emil Dubois of 80 Washington Square, East, and was entitled, "The Santa Maria." A silver medal will be given to the architects. The designs selected for honorable mention were one of Moorish character, submitted by Albert Wahle of 320 East Nineteenth Street, and one entitled "Liberty," by J. C. Beeckman of 160 Fifth Avenue.
Mr. Hertz' design was selected by the committee not alone for its artistic beauty, but because of its peculiar fitness. The main body of the arch is to be built of white marble, and with its fountains, its polished monolithic columns of pigeon-blood marble, its mosaic and gold inlaying, and the bas-relief work and surmounting group of bronze, the committee say it will be a monument to American architecture of which the city will be proud.
From the ground to the top of the bronze caravel in the center of the allegorical group with which the arch will be surmounted the distance will be 160 feet, and the entire width of the arch will be 120 feet. The opening from the ground to the keystone will be eighty feet high and forty feet wide. On the front of each pier will be two columns of pigeon-blood-red marble. Between each pair of columns and at the base of each pier will be large marble fountains, the water playing about figures representing Victory and Immortality. These fountains will be lighted at night with electric lights. The surface of the piers between the columns will be richly decorated in bas-relief with gold and mosaic. Above each fountain will be a panel, one representing Columbus at the court of Spain, and the other the great discoverer at the Convent of Rábida, just before his departure on the voyage which resulted in the discovery of America. In the spaces on either side of the crown of the arch will be colossal reclining figures of Victory in bas-relief.