The Soldiers' Memorial Tower is a historic war memorial located at Brockport in Monroe County, New York. Built in 1894, the Medina sandstone structure was designed in the Late Gothic Revival style to memorialize the town of Sweden's Civil War dead and marked a small plot of land set aside for the free interment of local veterans. At one point, the grounds held the remains of more than twenty individuals, though precise records were not kept; all but a few have since been moved to other locations.
The round tower originally stood 52 feet tall, though about a quarter of that height has been lost to erosion and damage over time. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, by which time it was already in significant disrepair. This listing has been the only lasting result of an effort begun around 1960 to restore the monument, which did not serve as the catalyst that supporters had hoped.
Soon after in 1995, the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) department at nearby SUNY Brockport began an educational and community service program to raise awareness of the Tower among ROTC students. Led by Captain John McClellan, students received one additional credit hour for participating in several hours of community service related to the Tower. The objective was to research the names on the Tower, highlight their service records in the 140th New York Infantry Regiment in the American Civil War, and to hopefully connect with living descendants of these individuals as a fundraising strategy. The program was discontinued sometime after 1997.
Fundraising to help restore or stabilize the structure continued to be extremely weak. In December 2012, the trustees of the Brockport Rural Cemetery Association reached an agreement to transfer the monument and its 17 surrounding acres to the Town of Sweden, which intends to build a firehouse on the site. The Town intends to invest funds to stabilize the structure and make it safer, but it does not have the funds for a full restoration.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by No Other
Discuss this with the author and others
No comments yet. Be the first to start the conversation.