Firemen's Memorial, Firefighters memorial on Riverside Drive, Upper West Side, Manhattan, US

The Firemen's Memorial stands on Riverside Drive at 100th Street, not in Riverside Park. It is built of Knoxville marble, with a grand staircase rising from the west to a balustraded plaza. A bas-relief above the fountain shows a horse-drawn engine rushing to a fire, and the monument is flanked by sculptures of Duty and Sacrifice.

Bishop Henry C. Potter proposed the memorial after Deputy Fire Chief Charles W. Kruger drowned in a flooded Canal Street basement in 1908. The Board of Estimate granted $40,000 on July 17, 1911, and a popular subscription added $50,500. Planned for Union Square, it was built on Riverside Drive, designed by Harold Van Buren Magonigle with sculptures by Attilio Piccirilli, and dedicated on September 5, 1913; its reverse inscription reads "Erected MCMXII."

The female figures were modelled on Audrey Munson, who also posed for Piccirilli's figures on the USS Maine National Monument in Central Park. The northern group shows a woman cradling a dead firefighter, the southern one the same woman with a child. Every autumn the mayor and fire commissioner attend a ceremony here, and since 2001 another is held each September 11.

The memorial stands on the east side of Riverside Drive at West 100th Street, reached by a grand staircase rising from the west into a balustraded plaza. The monument faces the drive, with the Knoxville marble block and its fountain at the top of the steps. A bronze tablet placed in 1927 sits in the plaza beneath the memorial.

The 1927 bronze tablet in the plaza below the memorial was placed by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and honors the horses that pulled the fire department's engines in earlier years. Look for it beneath the monument, separate from the 1912 dedication inscription on the reverse.