Hall of Fame great Americans - gallery of outdoor sculptures in the Bronx. America today, it is not too well known, and in the first half of the XX century, thundered on the entire continent. From those times there were bronze busts of pride and the spirit of the young country, forging its history.

Creating the United States, the founding fathers rejected the idea of ​​rewarding outstanding citizens knighthood - as is customary in the former mother country, Britain. However, society needs some form of recognition of compatriots. Philosopher and educator, Chancellor of New York University, Henry Mitchell McCracken has put forward the idea of ​​the Hall of Fame, like the European pantheon.

A worthy place for this hall was found quickly: the body of the New York University has one of the highest points of the city, which offers an impressive view of the Harlem River. Sam Hill had a glorious history: it once housed Fort Washington, near which in 1776 there was a battle with the British Army of the colonists.

In 1900, architect Stanford White built the neoclassical open colonnade embracing the building of the University Library. In the colonnade were provided space for two hundred bronze busts. Nominees were determined to perpetuate a special council ballot voters, which included well-known people with spotless reputation - writers, historians, educators and politicians. Could nominate anyone.

The idea has captured the country. The largest newspapers covered the course of voting. The influential Association spent a lot of money on lobbying candidates. In 1900 he was elected the first 29 great citizens, awarded the bronze busts in the Hall, among them - Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, scientist and politician Benjamin Franklin, General Ulysses S. Grant, the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, the inventor of the steamboat Robert Fulton. Over the next seven decades, the number of busts in the Hall came to ninety-eight.

For a while, the Americans, charmed shine Hall, considered the perpetuation in it even more prestigious than the awarding of the Nobel Prize. However, after the Second World little naive idea began to fade. In 1973, New York University, under the threat of bankruptcy sold the campus of Bronx Community College. Since 1976, elections were not held great. The last elected (including steel magnate Andrew Carnegie) did not manage to qualify for their own busts. Nineteen years it took to collect 25 thousand dollars for a bust of President Roosevelt.

Today, green hill, where once thundered battle - almost forgotten place, which, however, is not forbidden for tourists to visit. Silent bronze statues looking at the deserted sandy track. The names of some no longer speak to college students ran past. A bronze plaque near the busts tell of the glory - the timeless, the melting like smoke.