Free previewStop 7 of Gettysburg Battlefield Driving Tour
The Governor's Hall That Became an Arch
You're on Cemetery Ridge now, along Hancock Avenue, and the granite building in front of you is the Pennsylvania State Memorial, the largest state monument on this battlefield. It stands along the Union line of July 2, 1863. Look at the very top of the dome. That bronze figure up there is a goddess of Victory and Peace, and she's made of cannons.
This monument started as one old man's idea. Andrew Curtin had been Pennsylvania's governor during the Civil War. By the 1880s he was a congressman, and he wanted a Pennsylvania Memorial Hall built on top of Little Round Top, the hill you visited earlier. It would be a sixty-foot-square hall, a treasury of trophies and mementos from every Pennsylvania regiment that fought here.
The hall was included in a state spending bill in 1889. Then Governor James Beaver vetoed it, and the idea sat for eighteen years.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 7 of Gettysburg Battlefield Driving Tour (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
