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Cleopatra's Needle
comes to New York |
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Centuries
of Civil Engineering
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Gorringe, Henry H.
(1841-1885)
Egyptian Obelisks.
New York: Published by the Author, 1882.
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On July 20, 1880, a ship carrying an ancient Egyptian
obelisk docked in New York to begin the final stage of an engineering
project that started several months earlier in Alexandria, Egypt. The
project engineer, Lieutenant Commander Henry H. Gorringe, had successfully
removed the obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle from the site where it had
stood, leaning slightly toward the sea, since the time the Romans had
moved it from its original site in Heliopolis. Several weeks later, on
January 22, 1881, the obelisk was placed in its present position near the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park – a gift of the Egyptian
government to the people of the United States.
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"It is something to have witnessed the manipulation
of a mass weighing nearly two hundred and twenty tons changing its
position majestically, yet as easily and steadily as if it were without
weight. It was to me an inexpressible relief to feel that my work was
complete, and that no accident or incident had happened that would make
my countrymen regret that I had been intrusted with the work of removing
and re-erecting in their metropolis one of the most famous monuments of
the Old World and the most ancient and interesting relic of the past on
the American Continent." – H.H. Gorringe.
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