Roger Noble Burnham

Roger Noble Burnham (August 10, 1876 – March 14, 1962) was an American sculptor and teacher. He is best remembered for creating "The Trojan" (1930), the unofficial mascot of the University of Southern California.
Life and career.
He was the eldest of the four children of Arthur Burnham and Katharine Bray. His father was an 1870 graduate of Harvard University, and a Boston banker. He grew up just outside Boston, and attended the Robert G. Shaw School and The Hale School for Boys.
Burnham studied art and architecture at Harvard, graduating in 1899. He studied privately with Caroline Hunt Rimmer, and opened his own sculpture studio in Boston, specializing in portrait works. He moved to New York City in 1903, to work on the sculpture program for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, under Karl Bitter. He assisted George Brewster on twenty relief portrait medallions for the exterior of the Fair's Palace of Fine Arts, now the St. Louis Art Museum.
Burnham graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles in 1907, and made an extended 1908 tour of the South and Southwest in a production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The Rivals". He worked as an actor in early Hollywood films, and later performed Shakespeare, in Los Angeles.
He returned to Boston, and taught modeling at Harvard's School of Architecture from 1913 to 1917. He was chairman of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Chapter of the Boy Scouts of America, and moved to Hawaii in June 1917, to establish Boy Scout troops in the U.S. territory. He taught at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1926 to 1932.
"The Trojan".
"The Trojan" (1930)—officially named the "Trojan Shrine", but affectionately called "Tommy Trojan"—is a monument on the University of Southern California campus. The university's athletic teams are the USC Trojans.
The monument consists of a life size bronze warrior, wearing a championship belt and pleated skirt, a mohawk-plumed helmet, shin guards and sandals. He wields the Sword of Knowledge in one hand, and holds the Shield of Courage in the other. The figure stands upon a concrete pedestal, with inscriptions, bronze relief panels, and a Greek key border. "The Trojan" is inscribed on the front of the base, above the bronze seal of the university, and inscribed words listing the traits of an ideal Trojan: "Faithful," "Scholarly," "Skillful," "Courageous," "Ambitious." The left side of the base features a bronze relief panel representing athletics. The right side of the base features a bronze relief panel representing scholarship. The rear of the base features an incised flaming torch, and a bronze plaque with a quote in Latin and English.
Burnham's primary models for the figure were All-American USC football players Russ Saunders (head and upper half) and Erny Pinckert (lower half).
Military monuments.
Burnham was living in Honolulu in April 1918, when the United States entered World War I, and joined the Hawaii National Guard. Soon after the armistice, he designed a war memorial for the entrance to the city's Kapiolani Park. "It consists of three figures, the central one typifying Liberty while beneath are a Hawaiian warrior and a Hawaiian maiden. The warrior offers his spear while the maiden extends in outstretched hands a lei." Instead of a formal monument with sculpture, the Waikiki Natatorium War Memorial (1927) was built at Waikiki Beach.
He was commissioned to create a statue of Frank Luke, Jr. (1930), for the grounds of the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix. An ace U.S. Army pilot who died in World War I, Second Lieutenant Luke was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. A bronze plaque on the rear of the monument's base lists the names of the other 318 Arizonans who died in the war. The monument was dedicated on Armistice Day, 1930. Luke Air Force Base, in Glendale, Arizona, was named for the pilot in 1941.
Burnham took leave from Harvard to serve in the Massachusetts Naval Reserve during the Spanish-American War. More than fifty years later, he created "The Spirit of '98" (1950), the "United Spanish War Veterans Memorial" for the Sawtelle Veterans Home in Los Angeles County. It featured a tall, stepped concrete base, with marble figures of a soldier and sailor flanking a hooded goddess figure holding a torch. Burnham's marble statues were toppled in a 1971 earthquake. The memorial was restored with fiberglass replicas of the statues by sculptor David Wilkins, and relocated to Los Angeles National Cemetery.
He created the statue of General Douglas MacArthur for the "MacArthur Monument" (1955), in Los Angeles's MacArthur Park.
Other works.
Architect Edward T. P. Graham designed the 10-story Boston City Hall Annex (1912-1914), and Burnham (Graham's Harvard classmate) was given the commission to model four colossal figures for its 9th story cornice.
Needing some strong vertical projections to carry the lines of the four large Corinthian columns on the front into the attic story, Mr. Edward T. P. Graham, architect of the Annex, decided to use partially attached human figures. Keeping their architectural character in mind, the sculptor designed the figures with a certain stiffness and with emphasis upon the vertical lines of the Greek drapery. The proportions, particularly of the faces, were modified to meet the fact that the figures would be seen from far below and foreshortened.<br>Four standing figures, each 16 feet high and projecting 3 feet 2 inches from the building. Of reinforced concrete to match the limestone of the building.<br>By Roger Noble Burnham. Contracted for by the commission at $8,000, July 29, 1913.
The four goddess figures were cast in concrete and hollow (to reduce their weight). Even so, each figure weighed approximately 8 tons (7.26 metric tonnes), and needed to be hoisted more than up to the cornice. Burnham's figures were deemed unsafe, and destroyed in the process of removing them from the façade, in 1947.
Following the 1926 premature death of silent screen star Rudolph Valentino, Los Angeles City Council initially opposed the creation of a public monument to him. The city eventually relented, and approved the erection of a memorial fountain in Hollywood's De Longpre Park. Burnham's fountain sculpture was an Art Deco male nude, "Aspiration". Made of bronze and covered with gold-leaf, the streamlined figure looked skyward while standing upon a black marble globe. Its cubical black marble base featured an inscription: "Erected in Memory of / RUDOLPH VALENTINO / 1895 - 1926 / Presented by His Friends and / Admirers from Every Walk of / Life and in All Parts of the World / in Appreciation of the Happi- / ness Brought to Them by His / Cinema Portrayals." The fountain was dedicated May 6, 1930, on what would have been Valentino's 35th birthday.
The "Astronomers Monument" (1934), at Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, was built by the Public Works of Art Project of the New Deal. Designed by sculptor Archibald Garner, it is a hexagonal cast concrete obelisk, crowned by a bronze armillary sphere. Above its star-shaped base are six V-shaped recesses, in each of which stands a cast concrete Art Deco statue of an astronomer from history. The figures are approximately in height, and each was modeled by a different sculptor. Burnham created the "John Herschel" figure. The monument was dedicated November 25, 1934.
Will Rogers, an Oklahoma cowboy who became a nationally known humorist and movie star, died in an August 15, 1935 plane crash. Under contract to 20th Century Fox, the studio decided to name its new sound stage for Rogers, and commissioned Burnham to create a memorial plaque. The dedication was November 23, 1935, and the bronze portrait plaque was unveiled by 7-year-old Shirley Temple, Rogers's intended co-star for their next movie.
Burnham created a number of medals for the Medallic Art Company in New York City, and figurines of his sculptures were mass produced by Roxor Studios in Chicago. One early figurine was "Speed Demon" (1919), which featured a threaded screw hole for mounting as an automobile hood ornament. "The Spirit of Rotary" (1920) was marketed to members of Rotary International, and "Dedication to Service" (1921) to members of Kiwanas International. One of his best-selling figurines was "The Trojan" (1930), marketed to USC alumni.
At age 78, Burnham worked on a science exhibit for Disneyland. The centerpiece of Monsanto's Hall of Chemistry was the "Chemitron" (1955): a giant ring of eight, clear plastic test tubes—each about in height—that individually spun as the entire ring rotated. He modeled anthropomorphic figures representing the eight ingredients used to make plastics: Air, Coal, Limestone, Oil, Phosphate, Salt, Sulphur, and Water. His figures were cast in colorful tinted plastic, and one was mounted atop each spinning test tube.
Honors, exhibitions and awards.
Burnham was a member of the Boston Architectural Club, the American Numismatic Society, the Honolulu Art Society, the Painters and Sculptors Club of Los Angeles, and the Rotary Club of Los Angeles.
He exhibited at the 1911 Espoizione Internazionale d'arte in Rome. The Copley Gallery in Boston hosted a one-man-show of his sculpture in early 1913. He exhibited at the 1913 Salon of the Société des Artistes Français in Paris, and the 1913 Exposition Internationale de Gand in Brussels. The John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis hosted a one-man-show of his sculpture in April/May 1914, and he exhibited at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. He exhibited the bust of his wife and a collection of medals at the 1914 exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in Philadelphia; and his door panels for the Forsyth Dental Infirmary at PAFA's 1917 exhibition. His work was part of the sculpture competition of the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Burnham created the "Henry O. Avery Prize for Sculpture" medal (1904) for the Architectural League of New York, and became the first recipient of that medal. He won the 1912 national competition to design the University of California's scholarship medal. He created the Seal for the 1928 Pacific Southwest Exposition in Long Beach, California, and was awarded a Diploma of Honor at the exposition. His portrait bust of poet Alfred Noyes was awarded First Prize at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's 1944 annual exhibition.
Personal.
Burnham married writer Eleanor Howard Waring (1868-1959), on June 18, 1909. Their honeymoon trip in a hot air balloon made the front page of "The New York Times".
He and his wife moved to Hawaii in June 1917. She founded an amateur theatre group in Honolulu, the "Lanai Players," and directed the productions. The couple left Hawaii in 1922, and lived in Berkeley, California for a couple years, before settling in Los Angeles. Burnham found the view from Griffith Park inspiring, and built a studio "in a little dead-end place, perched almost on the Observatory grounds."
Burnham was a religious man, and in 1951, "outlined a plan before his city's religious leaders in which he proposed to place a 150-ft. statue of the smiling Jesus upon a mountain towering over Hollywood." The project was never built.
Eleanor and Roger Burnham were married for 50 years, until her death in 1959. He died three years later, in Los Angeles, following an extended illness. Both were cremated, and their ashes are located at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.