Lafayette Square

This guide to Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. centers on the fifteen-ton bronze of Andrew Jackson reared on his horse's hind legs, and on Philip Reid, the enslaved craftsman purchased by sculptor Clark Mills in 1842 to help build it. It follows the self-taught Mills and Reid working out, by trial and error at a makeshift foundry on the Ellipse, how to balance the first rearing equestrian statue ever cast in America. Twenty thousand people came to watch it unveiled in January 1853.