Jefferson Sculptures Multi-Cache

This cache will take you on a brief walking tour around Lubert Plaza, the centerpiece of Thomas Jefferson University’s latest wave of campus development. Since I started working in Jeff Alumni Hall this past spring, I’ve had plenty of occasion to observe the sculptures dwelling in and around this plaza while crisscrossing campus for meetings. This cache will take you to four sculptures in the vicinity of the plaza, where you will have to answer six questions to get the final coordinates. Instructions for where to go are italicized, while questions to answer are in bold. Context for each sculpture on the tour is in plaintext.

Final Coordinates: N 39 56.ABC W 075 09.DEF

The posted coordinates will bring you face to face with TJU’s namesake.

This 1987 work is one of four bronze casts of a 1975 fiberglass sculpture of Thomas Jefferson made by Lloyd Lillie (b. 1932), a Massachusetts sculptor. Lillie, now Professor Emeritus of Art at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts after 24 years on the faculty there, is best known for his life size sculptures of prominent American historical figures. Among these, he considers his Jefferson sculpture to be his most famous work, according to an interview in the Boston Globe. The other casts are located at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO, the University of Virginia in Chancellorsville, VA, and the College of William in Mary in Willimasburg, VA.

Question 1: Toward which cardinal direction is Jefferson looking?

1. North, A=8
2. East, A=9
3. South, A=7
4. West, A=6

Look across the street, toward Lubert Plaza. You will see a towering statue of a pioneering American surgeon. Cross the street and go to the base of the sculpture.

This 9 foot tall bronze sculpture of Samuel D. Gross (1805-1884), an 1828 graduate of what was then the Medical Department of Jefferson College, is the work of Alexander Stirling Calder (1870-1945), a member of the most famous family of American sculptors. His father, Alexander Milne Calder (1846-1923), arrived in Philadelphia from Scotland in 1868. Already by then an accomplished sculptor, Alexander Milne Calder gained fame in his new home for creating over 250 sculptures for Philadelphia City Hall, including the famous 37 ft. tall statue of William Penn atop its tower, still the largest rooftop sculpture in the world after more than a century. The third Alexander Calder (1898-1976), son of Alexander Stirling Calder, eclipsed both his father and grandfather in fame as an abstract sculptor, particularly for the hanging metal sculptures dubbed by his friend Marcel Duchamp as “mobiles”, and was a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

This sculpture was Alexander Stirling Calder’s first major commission, received after his return to Philadelphia from studying sculpture in Paris. Its subject, Samuel Gross, was one of the most influential surgeons in the United States in the 19^th century, and a foundational figure in Jefferson’s history. A promising candidate for medical school, he opted to enroll in the second class of the Medical Department of Jefferson College rather than the more prestigious University of Pennsylvania Medical School, to the dismay of his mentor Joseph K. Swift. After stints in private practice and anatomical lecturing in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Louisville, he accepted the position of Chair of Surgery in 1856 at Jefferson Medical College, again rebuffing the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, which had offered him a professorship the year before that he declined. He remained there until his death in 1884, after which he was cremated, an unusual procedure in that era, and buried in The Woodlands Cemetery.

Although he was a lion of American medicine in his era, serving as the president of the American Medical Association and founding the American Surgical Association is greatest claim to fame today is as the subject of the American painter Thomas Eakins’s 1875 painting The Gross Clinic. The painting depicts Gross operating on the femur of an unknown subject suffering from osteomyelitis before a gallery of attentive students. Rejected for display in the Fine Arts Gallery of the American Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, Eakins sold the painting for $200 (approximately $5,000 in 2018) to a group of Jefferson Medical College alumni, who donated it to their alma mater in 1878. In 2006, Jefferson’s Board of Trustees voted to sell the painting to the National Art Gallery for $68 million. After a public outcry, it was kept in Philadelphia and sold to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it currently resides.

Alexander Stirling Calder, like his father before him, had been a student of Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and he modeled the statue after Gross’s pose in Eakins’s painting with the assistance of Eakins’s models and drafts. The sculpture was commissioned by the American Surgical Association for display near the Army Medical Museum on the grounds of the Smithsonian in the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where it was installed on May 5^th, 1897 during a dedication ceremony attended by President William McKinley. When the Museum was demolished in 1969, Jefferson negotiated an agreement with the federal government, which passed an Act of Congress allowing the statue to be moved to Philadelphia. On May 1^st, 1970, it was installed on Jefferson campus with a dedication ceremony honoring Gross’s contributions to Jefferson, and it has remained there ever since.

Question 2: On the base of the sculpture is an inscription and a year. What is that year?

1. 1876, B=9
2. 1884, B=1
3. 1897, B=0
4. 1970, B=8

While facing Samuel Gross, turn to your right, where you will see a bevy of furry creatures playing in a fountain. Walk over and inspect the fountain, where you should also be able to see a bronze plaque set in the stone base on the northwest side of the fountain

The final two sculptures on the tour are both the work of Henry Mitchell (1915-1980), whose bronze creatures scamper throughout Philadelphia. The piece in front of you, Otters, was completed in 1979, one of the last works he finished before he died. It is reminiscent of an earlier Mitchell sculpture, the much larger Impala Fountain (1964) familiar to anyone who has wandered through the entrance to the Philadelphia Zoo on a hot summer day. Otters was originally installed on the west side of the plaza, before the construction of the Dorrance H. Hamilton and the reclamation of Lubert Plaza. In 2007, it was moved to its present location. The sculpture is dedicated to William W. Bodine, Jr. (1918-1983), president of Jefferson Medical College from 1959-1967 and chairman of the newly formed Thomas Jefferson University from 1970-1977. Otters was commissioned upon his retirement from that position to commemorate his decades-long role as “Leader, builder and friend of Thomas Jefferson University.”

Question 3: How many otters are there in the fountain?

1. Three, C=6
2. Four, C=0
3. Five, C=9
4. Six, C=2

Question 4: On what date was Otters dedicated?

1. May 13^th, 1979, D=7
2. June 6^th, 1979 D=3
3. July 4^th, 1979, D=6
4. September 25^th, 1979, D=5

Look north toward Walnut Street, where you will see a large winged creature soaring overhead. When you reach it, you should see a bronze plaque set in the ground a few feet away on the west side of the statue.

Henry Mitchell’s earlier bestial creation for the newly formed Thomas Jefferson University is The Winged Ox, Symbol of St. Luke the Physician (1975). The sculpture celebrates the academic and clinical excellence for which Jefferson is known. The 16.5 foot cylinder on which the winged ox rests is embossed with the names of prominent physicians throughout history, beginning in the classical era with Hippocrates and continuing up to. Five faculty members and alumni of Jefferson are included on the list, including Samuel Gross.

Question 5: On what date was The Winged Ox, Symbol of St. Luke the Physician dedicated?

1. March 19^th, 1976, E=3
2. May 24^th, 1976, E=1
3. August 8^th, 1976, E=0
4. October 18^th, 1976, E=4

Question 6: Find Samuel David Gross on the cylinder. Whose name is located directly beneath his?

1. Thomas Addison, F=9
2. Claude Bernard, F=3
3. Richard Bright, F=7
4. Robert James Graves, F=4

I hope you have enjoyed this brief walking tour of a few of my favorite sculptures here at Jefferson. I have done my best to ensure the directions are clear and each question is unambiguous. Please exercise extreme stealth when finding the final as this is a very well-trafficked area. If you run into any difficulties with the tour or the final, feel free to message me via Geocaching.com. And if you're looking for this cache M-F from 9-5, who knows? You might even run into me.