Twin Marble Lions in Boston Public Library Part of Boston's Irish Heritage Trail

One of Boston’s most popular and widely-viewed public art memorials is located in the foyer of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square.

Known locally as the Twin Lions, the amazing monument is a tribute to two Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry regiments - the Second and the Twentieth - that fought bravely in the Civil War.

The lions were carved by master sculptor Louis St. Gaudens (1854-1913) and were commissioned by the surviving members of the two volunteer regiments. Although St. Gaudens intended to polish the Siena marble before the memorial was unveiled, the regiment members were so delighted with the unpolished, raw look of the statues, that they asked the artist to leave it as is.

Photo by BITA

Born in New York City on January 1, 1854, Louis was the son of Bernard Saint-Gaudens from France and Mary McGuinness from Ireland, and he was the brother and protégé of his older brother Augustus Saint Gaudens, considered the preeminent American sculptor of his generation.

Though overshadowed by his older brother, Louis worked closely with Augustus through their careers, and was able to “interpret more clearly his brother’s ideas in both clay and marble. As a worker in marble, he had few equals,” according to the Boston Evening Transcript.

Louis St. Gaudens

Louis assisted Augustus on many famous pieces, including the Shaw Memorial, The Parnell Monument in Dublin and the Sherman Monument in New York City, according to the Transcript.

In addition to the twin lions at the BPL, Louis’s most notable work is found at the central pavilion of Union Station in Washington, DC, which The Washington Post called “one of the most majestic in the world. In many respects it resembles the Arch of Constantine, and its outline preserves the central ide a of a colossal city portal.”

The work includes six allegorical figures on the façade of Union Station, as well forty-six 17 foot high figures cut in white Vermont marble, and the figures of the Roman soldiers in the station’s waiting room.

During his life, Louis adopted the spelling of St. Gaudens to differentiate himself from his more famous brother Augustus Saint Gaudens.

The twin lions, along with other sculptures, rare books and other material, is featured on Boston’s Irish Heritage Trail.

Read How the Irish Imagined the Civil War, about how Irish and Irish-American sculptors helped define the Civil War in public spaces around the nation.

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