Maybe I’m getting older, but I don’t find war memorials like this one in Carrol Park, Brooklyn jingoistic. Erected in 1921, now in the middle of a playground and public space, it has a common-man kind of feel. Local, it’s dedicated to soldiers and sailors from the district. I like the over the shoulder look of the sailor in the the last posted photograph.
I didn’t realize these old memorials were out of favor; I guess it’s a classic example of people today judging the taste of the past, which is just silly. In a college poetry class, most of the class applied 1981 PC standards to poetry of the middle ages, dismissing the poems as sexist without taking into account the social mores of the time. I love the unconventional layout of the Vietnam memorial, but its modern streamlined look doesn’t doesn’t make the memorials of 100 years ago obsolete:, at the time it lwas built there was simply a different different memorial style.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2014/08/21/the-intermittently-true-adventures-of-moishetwo-gun-cohen-2/
http://www.wnyc.org/story/the-leonard-lopate-show-2014-08-22/
hidden places in NYC+more