It is Augustus St.Gaudens's benevolent presentment of Peter Cooper that stands within the little park enclosed by Cooper Square.

The name of St.
Gaudens is associated with those of John La Farge, White, MacMonnies, MacNeil, and Calder in the making of the Washington Arch.

To St.Gaudens belongs the equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman in the Plaza.
And here, in Madison Square, the Farragut statue is his.

Unveiled in 1881, executed in Paris when the sculptor was thirty years of age, and exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1880, the Farragut is, in the opinion of Miss Henderson, the base upon which St.Gaudens's great reputation rests.

"And while," she writes, "in New York its merits are often balanced with those of the Sherman equestrian group, at the entrance to Central Park; the Peter Cooper, in Cooper Square; and the relief of Dr.
Bellows, in the All-Souls' Church--all later works--it has never had to yield precedence to any, but holds its own by force of its splendid vigour and youthful plasticity.