(From a Photograph by Paul Dana)
MR. DANA AT SEVENTY
To give up all interest in the court-house swindle.
To receive no more revenue from the department of survey and inspection of buildings; and he hopes the people of New York will remember his generosity in giving up this place, inasmuch as his share amounts to over one hundred thousand dollars a year.
Tweed was liked by many New Yorkers, particularly those who knew him only by his lavish charities. One of these wrote the following letter, which the Sun printed on December 7, 1870, under the heading “A Monument to Boss Tweed—the Money Paid In”:
Enclosed please find ten cents as a contribution to erect a statue to William M. Tweed on Tweed Plaza. I have no doubt that fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand of his admirers will contribute. Yours, etc.,
Seventeenth Ward Voter.
On December 12 the Sun said editorially:
Has Boss Tweed any friends? If he has, they are a mean set. It is now more than a week since an appeal was made to them to come forward and put up the ancillary qualities to erect a statue of Mr. Tweed in the centre of Tweed Plaza; but as yet only four citizens have sent in their subscriptions. These were not large, but they were paid in cash, and there is reason for the belief that they were the tokens of sincere admiration for Mr. Tweed. But the hundreds, or, rather, thousands, of small-potato politicians whom he has made rich and powerful stand aloof and do not offer a picayune.
We propose that the statue shall be executed by Captain Albertus de Groot, who made the celebrated Vanderbilt bronzes, but we have not yet decided whether it shall represent the favorite son of New York afoot or ahorseback. In fact, we rather incline to have a nautical statue, exhibiting Boss Tweed as a bold mariner, amid the wild fury of a hurricane, splicing the main brace in the foretopgallant futtock shrouds of his steam-yacht. But that is a matter for future consideration. The first thing is to get the money; and if those who claim to be Mr. Tweed’s friends don’t raise it, we shall begin to believe the rumor that the Hon. P. Brains Sweeny has turned against him, and has forbidden every one to give anything toward the erection of the projected statue.