Talk:Hall of Fame for Great Americans

Site
I'm seeking a clarification as to where the Hall of Fame is located. One source claims CUNY; another source claims NYU. Which University is the site? TooPotato 01:15, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... my encyclopedia claims that the building is located at NYU. McKim, Mead and White was the architectural firm that designed the building.  Information in that article claims that the building is at NYU.  An erroneous statement may be at the CUNY article.  If so, please remove the information because I can't sleep at night until someone who knows for certain puts things in order. TooPotato 22:33, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * At George Peabody, a claimant has written that City University of New York sponsored the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. I beg to differ. TooPotato 03:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, it was originally built on an NYU campus that is now CUNY's Bronx Community College.--Pharos 07:05, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Now I can sleep at night. TooPotato 10:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Images
I have just added a new image of the Hall of Fame, and I have a bunch more - some more general views as well as some close ups of the busts. It was very bright today so the pictures are darker than I would have liked. However, if you have any requests or suggestions I would love to put up a few more. H0n0r 21:24, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking the photos. It would be great if you could upload all your decent images to Wikimedia Commons.  That way, they'll be easily available to Wikipedias in all different languages.  If you have any good shots of individual busts, you might also want to consider adding those to their biographical articles here.  It would also be nice to have one or two good individual busts for this page; I would recommend either those that were particularly well done or that came out well in the photograph, or possibly those of persons with a local connection, like Irving or particularly Poe, who had a cottage right in the Bronx.--Pharos 01:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Didn't they stop inductions in the 1970s?
I believe that the Hall of Fame for Great Americans continued to induct people until around 1976, then stopped. Presumably that was due to a lack of funds, but it's surprising that there have been no significant attempts to revive the Hall of Fame since then, and this ought to be discussed in the article. --Metropolitan90 04:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I think they just stopped inducting people because all of the 102 (physical) places had been taken (though reading their website apparently four bronzes are no longer on-site for some reason).--Pharos 04:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * But nevertheless the Hall must have declined as an organization (i.e. not just filled up the site); note that the official web site doesn't even bother to list all the inductees. --Metropolitan90 04:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually I think they have a pretty snazzy website for an institution of this sort– including a complete listing online here, though it's designed a bit annoyingly so you have to click through many pages. I don't think there is such a thing as an "organization" anymore– it's just run by the college.  The tremendous "decline", though, has not been in the upkeep of the hall (which is well-maintained as of late), but in public interest and attendance.--Pharos 05:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay. Nevertheless, we ought to have an explanation of what happened to the Hall in the 1970s and afterward. --Metropolitan90 05:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, feel free to research and expand on that. And I also think the hall was in none-too-good repair before it was restored in the last few years.  Of course it is still tremendously underutilized– I guess because the whole concept is a rather old-fashioned idea, and there has perhaps not been enough thought put into how best the hall could serve the modern community.--Pharos 05:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Two weeks ago I took my first graders around the Hall of Fame and there are definitely still spots open and unused. We didn't notice any missing bronzes, but had good fun imagining them as future hall-of-famers. There are two on-site historians for the hall of fame listed on the BCC website - if you're really interested then give them a call. H0n0r 09:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Re-title Article
Would it not be far more communicative, and much much better sense to re-title this article so that it read:


 * Hall of Fame (original)

I don't know how it could be done; but, given that there are now so many halls of fame, it would seem that such a reworking of the title would be a very productive thing to do.129.94.6.30 06:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this would be a terrible idea. Although this may be the first American site to CALL itself a "Hall of Fame," there are certainly others that functioned as such: Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol; the Charles Willson Peale Museum, etc. Keeping the site's original name makes far more sense, and does not mislead the reader. == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 17:04, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

General Page Content
A visit to the Bronx to see the Hall of Fame inspired me to try some virtual maintenance of the Hall by adding more information to its Wikipedia page. I have added the names of all members, and I'd like to create a couple of new pages listing them alphabetically and by category as well as by date of induction. It's a very quaint and outmoded institution, if it is even an institution anymore, but it's very interesting as a glimpse into American history and what the 20th century thought about American history. I will try to work on the page a bit more in the coming weeks. (15 June 2007)

Dropo59tx 14:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Bavarian Hall of Fame
OK, I'm confused... Are the Walhalla temple and the Ruhmeshalle auf der Anhöhe (Bavarian Hall of Fame), also described in the German Wikipedia under the title Ruhmeshalle (München) the same thing?
 * Duh. It's all explained clearly in Walhalla temple. Yep, King Ludwig I built two of the things.

I'm beginning to be pretty sure they are two different things, the Walhalla Ruhmes- und Ehrenhalle being near Regensburg and the Ruhmeshalle auf der Anhöhe being in Munich.

Barry Popik's "The Big Apple" site has an article about Hall of Fame for Great Americans which, among other things, quotes: 19 July 1869, New York Times, pg. 1: ...but the most prominent and elaborate of all these memorials is the Bavarian Hall of Fame, which is built on a bank rising from the flat plain, some little distance outside the city. This seems to make it clear that the structure in Munich was being called the "Bavarian Hall of Fame," in English, in the United States, in 1869.

So I'm standing by my edit that says that the one in the Bronx is the "original Hall of Fame ''in the United States." Dpbsmith (talk) 20:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Removing some unreferenced material
I'm removing these links: because they say nothing about Hall of Fame nomination. I am removing the names from the list of nominees for the same reason. I'm also removing the reference to Zechariah Sherburne, as it is a redlink and no reference of any sort is provided.
 * Sheldon Bio
 * Bulkeley Bio
 * Patterson Bio

I think we need references for this section and that it should be removed if none are provided. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

John Updike stories set in the American Academy
''' American Academy of Arts and Letters would a Hall scholar please read and critique here? '''

One of that great American author's best known books, Bech: a Book, ends with a story, "Bech Enters Heaven," which take place in an institution similar to the Hall of Fame, the American Academy of Arts and Letters. (And now, like the Hall, similarly isolated physically, next to "Boricua College," the map says.) As a college professor, I would guess that Updike's famous fidelity to realistic detail probably makes the stories the best record of the role that institutions like the Hall once played in America's culture. The story would be useful to anyone trying to reconstruct that. Profhum (talk) 08:27, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Nominees/not elected section
I reorganized the list of never-elected nominees because it was numbered, even though the numbers had no significance, and alphabetized by first name instead of by last name. It should be noted that the source provided does not purport to be a complete list of the nominees -- the writers of The People's Almanac series compiled the winners and their vote totals, the top runners-up, and mentioned only a few other vote-getters in each election, some of whom received only a single vote. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:22, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Today: really more of a History Section...
I just deleted this sentence from the beginning of the second paragraph of the Today section: In 1973 NYU abruptly abandoned its Bronx campus and, with it, the Hall of Fame. Eventually New York State purchased the complex and it is now under the auspices of Bronx Community College. However, the section is really a History section and should either be labeled as such or with a time-period.

As for the "largely forgotten" claim: can someone find some attendance figures? --CmdrDan (talk) 22:44, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Jackie Robinson
Unlikely the famous civil rights hero/bb player was inducted at about 2 years old in 1920. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:53, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, Jackie Robinson was still alive at the time (1970) of his listed induction! WHPratt (talk) 16:29, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Rubin
Much of the text seems to cleave too closely to Rubin. Could some-one please check for plagiarism?Kdammers (talk) 09:59, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Where are the Confederate busts?
Lee and Jackson removed 2017. So what happened to them? 2A00:23C7:E284:CF00:856C:B132:FA6F:A3C1 (talk) 12:56, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Removal of images of busts
@Jackygage: I noticed you reverted my removal of the busts' images with the summary images of sculptures were removed by previous user because there were not images of every sculpture. I believe the images should remain available. While this was a contributing factor to the removals, the main reason I removed them is that many of the images that are available were of busts that were completed after 1926.

As Mike Christie mentioned, the United States does not have freedom of panorama for sculptures or artwork. Sculptures completed in or before 1926 are in the public domain. However, sculptures completed after 1926 are likely still under copyright, as the copyright term for sculptures is 95 years after completion, unless it failed to meet certain formalities outlined in this table. The vast majority of sculptures in the Hall of Fame were completed after 1926, even for inductees who were elected before then - only 37 of the busts in the Hall of Fame were completed in or before 1926. My edit summary was referring to these 37 busts, not all of the sculptures in the Hall of Fame; furthermore, not all of these 37 busts have pictures on Commons. Hence, I removed these images, since there are so few busts that are both in the public domain and on Commons. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:00, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Co-ordinates
The given co-ords are 40°51'31"N 73°54'52"W - but 40°51'31.7"N 73°54'50.9"W seems to me to be more accurate, being about 25m E of the given co-ords, and near the centre of the curved portion; or 40°51'31.5"N 73°54'50.4"W, which is roughly the centre of the whole building, and is about 10m E of the given co-ords. Prisoner of Zenda (talk) 06:37, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification, I have changed the coordinates accordingly. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:17, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Identifying by name busts / inductees mentioned
I think the names of the inductees whose busts were never made would be of interest; I think the same is true of the two confederate generals. Why are none of those names provided in this article? Ive never been to the Hall, so I don’t know but shouldn’t the busts be a simple process of elimination? And I know the generals are Lee and Jackson. Why aren’t they named? Ryguy913 (talk) 11:29, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

(I’m referring to the mention in the initial summary, not the history section.) Ryguy913 (talk) 11:32, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
 * These names have been added to the lead now; they were already mentioned in the history section. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:06, 11 December 2022 (UTC)