The monument was dedicated on June 17, 1874, in a large ceremony at the park.[1] The dedication took place on the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill (a Revolutionary War battle in which Putnam participated almost 100 years prior) and occurred during a wave of monument-building in the United States that honored both Revolutionary and Civil War-era figures.[1] The statue would be one of the first to be erected in the park,[5] coming several years after the erection of the first statue in the park, one of Bishop Thomas Church Brownell, in 1869.[4]