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Civic Virtue Triumphant Over Unrighteousness (1909–1922) is a sculpture group and fountain in New York City, created by sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies and architect Thomas Hastings, and carved by the Piccirilli Brothers. The fountain was originally placed in front of New York City Hall in Manhattan, spent almost 72 years beside Queens Borough Hall in Queens, and the sculpture group is now located in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Even before its completion, the sculpture was controversial because of its treatment of the female figures: "MacMonnies's conflation of the public (municipal) and personal (psychological) disturbed many people." American women had just gotten the right to vote in 1920, and the sculpture group was seen as Misogyny.
MacMonnies later answered the critics of his sculpture:
"What do I care if all the ignoramuses and quack politicians in New York, together with all the damn-fool women get together to talk about my statue? Let'em cackle. Let 'em babble. You can't change the eternal verities that way."
"Can it be, that the women are angry because some man finally found the strength to resist temptation? In most instances of romantic sculpture, we have the man succumbing to the temptress. I think women should be pleased when strength is found to withstand their wonderful wiles. Antiquity is all the other way."
"From Paris to Patagonia — universal allegory pictures sirens, temptresses, as woman. If you suppress allegory you suppress all intellectual effort. I gather that allegory has long been extinct in City Hall."
The fountain was installed in Kew Gardens, at Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike, beside the new Borough Hall. It was unveiled on May 29, 1941.
The fountain was the site of a 1972 feminist movement demonstration. In 1987, Queens's first woman president, Claire Shulman, proposed that the statue be moved: "A municipal building is not an appropriate place for a statue that portrays women as evil and treacherous."
The marble sculpture and fountain deteriorated markedly, but Queens did not have the money to restore it.
Former Congressman Anthony Weiner, in the first public event of his unsuccessful campaign for mayor of New York City, held a press conference at the fountain on February 25, 2011. He decried its depiction of women and demanded its removal, even its sale on Craigslist. Congressman Anthony Weiner press conference, from YouTube. Green-Wood Cemetery agreed to accept it. The sculpture group, without the pedestal and pool of the Angelina Crane Fountain, was removed from Queens Borough Hall on December 15, 2012, and relocated to the cemetery grounds in Brooklyn.
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