Edward Rothstein reviews the New York Historical Society exhibit on Lafayette's 1824 tour of the USA, in today's New York Times. We saw the show while it was under construction last week, and as a life member of the American Friends of Lafayette, I can say it looked pretty good. There's also a nice review in the New York Sun by Francis Morrone:
Soon Pennsylvanians and Virginians and Tennesseans would feel like Americans. All across the country towns were named Lafayette, or Fayette, or Fayetteville, or — after Lafayette's French estate — La Grange. In New York, we remember him in the name of Lafayette Street, where the old row of stately houses now known as Colonnade Row was originally named La Grange Terrace, in the early 1830s. A statue of a rather foppish Lafayette stands in Union Square; its artist was Frédéric Bartholdi, who also gave us the Statue of Liberty. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, a splendid Lafayette Memorial on Prospect Park West at 9th Street was designed by Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon, who also did the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The memorial in Park Slope became a rallying symbol for American aid to the French in World War I.
