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Raffaele Menconi

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American sculptor
One of the pair of bronze flagpole bases, sculpted by Menconi to a sketch by Thomas Hastings (1912) and cast at Tiffany Studios, stand before the New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue, New York

Raffaele Menconi (1877 — 1942) was an Italian-American sculptor.

Menconi established a practice in New York City with his brother Giuseppe (Joseph). Menconi realised the bronze architectural sculptures and fittings for a generation of Beaux-Arts architects, such as Carrère and Hastings; Menconi's bronze flagpole bases for the Fifth Avenue front of the New York Public Library (1912, illustrated) are particularly prominent. Another pair of bronze flagpole bases by Menconi, showing an American eagle and representations of the four seasons, to designs of Egerton Swartwout, stand before the Missouri State Capitol. His work also appears on the Reader's Digest building in Chappaqua New York, and in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He married Josephine Zampieri; their son, Ralph J. Menconi (1915–1972), who apprenticed in his father's New York studio, was also a well-known sculptor and medalist. The Menconi Family lived in an Italianate house designed by Menconi in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, for many years. Menconi once owned a cliffside home in Union City, New Jersey.

Notes

  1. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1924 (westchester County Naturalization Records Archived 2008-10-25 at the Wayback Machine).
  2. Noted by Henry Hope Reed. The Golden City (New York: Norton Library) 1971, illustrated p. 38; Reed's photograph in the collection of NYPL is inscribed "Written on the verso of one of the four photographs of the flagpole base: Ornament, Raphael and Joseph Menconi, modellers; figures, Sc. Grandelli; S.M. Rasario and Bros.; Menconi Bros." (NYPL Digital Gallery: click "Image details").
  3. Missouri Capitol: Flagpole, (sculpture).
  4. Lissner, Caren (2023-06-30). "From Up Here, You Can See Manhattan, and Houses Left to Crumble". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-07-18.
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