Duke Ellington Memorial

The Duke Ellington Memorial stands at the entrance to Harlem as a towering twenty-five-foot bronze tribute to one of the most influential musicians in American history. It was the first monument in New York City dedicated to an African American, serving as a permanent anchor at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and One Hundred Tenth Street. The sculptor Robert Graham designed the massive piece, featuring a figure of Ellington standing beside his grand piano, held aloft by columns that are crowned with nine muses. The memorial is a testament to the decades of work by jazz pianist Bobby Short, who began the campaign to honor his hero in nineteen seventy-nine and spent eighteen years raising the necessary funds for its completion.