Explore the History of this artwork, Spirit of Communication.
Commissioned in 1914, it was crafted by Evelyn Beatrice Longman. The work was completed in 1916 and hoisted to the roof of AT&T Corporate Headquarters at 195 Broadway in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The statue's design by Evelyn Beatrice Longman was selected as the winner of a competition, similar to the 1917 Bell Telephone Memorial. It became New York City's second-largest sculpture, after the Statue of Liberty. The statue's original name as commissioned under the aegis of AT&T's president Theodore N. Vail was Genius of Telegraphy. By that time, AT&T had spun off its telegraphy component, Western Union, and the work was renamed to Genius of Electricity. In the 1928,1938, and 1941 editions of the training course Principles of Electricity applied to Telephone and Telegraph Work, it was referred to as Spirit of Electricity.
The statue weighs more than 14.5 tonnes (16 short tons) and is 7.3 metres (24 ft) tall, with wings that extend 2.7 metres (9 ft) from its body. It is cast in bronze and covered with more than 12,500 pieces of gold leaf.Sometime in the mid-1930s, AT&T changed the name of the statue (and the image) to The Spirit of Communication.  It continued to stand atop the 195 Broadway building until the early 1980s. In 1984, AT&T moved to a new postmodern headquarters building at 550 Madison Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, designed by Philip Johnson. On Johnson's suggestion, the statue was relocated to the  foyer of the new location.
Bell Telephone Memorial New York City Western Union 195 Broadway AT&T 550 Madison Avenue New York Evelyn Beatrice Longman Lower Manhattan Theodore N. Vail Financial District Midtown Manhattan