General Worth Monument
New York, New York County, New York
Marker Inscription
MAJOR GENERAL / WILLIAM JENKINS WORTH / 1794–1849 / WILLIAM J. WORTH, BORN IN HUDSON, N.Y. / BEGAN HIS MILITARY CAREER IN THE WAR OF 1812, / AND FROM 1820–1828 WAS COMMANDANT OF CADETS AT WEST POINT. / IN THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR, HE DISTINGUISHED HIMSELF… transcription continues on the marker
This transcription may be incomplete
Our source stores marker text in a field capped at 255 characters, and this inscription appears to have been cut off. We won’t guess at the missing words — the inscription is the primary source, and inventing it would be worse than leaving it short.
Have you stood in front of this marker? Send us the full text or a photo of the sign and we’ll complete the record.
The Story
This granite obelisk at the crossing of Fifth Avenue and Broadway honors William Jenkins Worth, a soldier from Hudson, New York, whose career traced the young republic's expanding military ambitions. He earned his commission in the War of 1812, spent the 1820s shaping the officer corps as Commandant of Cadets at West Point, and won his greatest fame in the hard-fought campaigns of the Mexican-American War of the 1840s. When he died in 1849, the city he served brought him home, and the monument that rose over his grave became one of the very few burial sites in Manhattan marked by a public memorial.
Why it matters
Worth embodies the generation of professional American soldiers who carried the country from its precarious early wars to the continental conquests that reshaped the nation, and his name endures across the map — most notably in Fort Worth, Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When William Jenkins Worth was born in 1794, the United States was barely a decade old and still deeply unsure of itself. It had won its independence but had almost no standing army, no permanent officer class, and a wary, frontier relationship with the great powers of Europe. A young man of that generation who chose the military was choosing an institution that was still being invented around him.
By the time Worth reached the corner where this obelisk now stands, New York had grown from a colonial port into the ambitious commercial heart of the nation. The crossing of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, once the northern edge of the built city, became a fashionable civic space — exactly the kind of prominent public ground a grateful city reserves for the men it wants to remember.
His life, 1794 to 1849, brackets a remarkable half-century. He came of age in the anxious years of a second war with Britain and died just as the country was digesting an enormous new expanse of western territory. The republic that buried him was continental in a way the republic that bore him could scarcely have imagined.
People & events
Worth's story begins in Hudson, New York, and in the War of 1812 — the conflict that first tested whether the young nation could defend itself. For an ambitious officer, that war was a proving ground, and Worth emerged from it as a soldier with a future rather than a boy who had merely enlisted.
The next chapter was quieter but arguably more important. From 1820 to 1828 he served as Commandant of Cadets at West Point, the academy then shaping the country's first true professional officer corps. In that role a soldier's influence outlives his own battles: the discipline, bearing, and standards he instilled traveled outward through every cadet he trained, into commands across the growing country.
His greatest fame came later, in the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, where the inscription tells us he distinguished himself. It was a hard-fought campaign, and men who performed well in it became household names. When he died in 1849, the city claimed him as its own and raised this monument over his grave — a rare honor, for very few burial places in Manhattan are marked by a public memorial at all.
Its place in the American story
Worth belongs to a particular and pivotal American generation: the professional soldiers who bridged the gap between the improvised militias of the Revolution and the disciplined armies that would carry the country across a continent. They were not the founders, but they were the men who made the founders' nation durable.
That arc — from the defensive struggle of 1812 to the far-reaching campaigns of the 1840s — is the arc of the United States itself in miniature, moving from a fragile coastal republic toward a transcontinental power. Worth's career traces that change almost step for step.
And his name did not stay on this single stone. Cities and forts across the map carry it, most famously Fort Worth, Texas. That scattering of a New Yorker's name across the far reaches of the country is itself a kind of history lesson in how the nation expanded and how it chose to remember the men who served during that expansion.
If you visit
Look first at the form of the monument itself: a tall granite obelisk, austere and vertical, the kind of shape the nineteenth century reserved for figures it wanted to cast as heroic and permanent. It rewards a slow circle on foot rather than a passing glance.
Remember as you stand there that this is not only a memorial but a grave — an unusual thing in the middle of Manhattan. That single fact changes the feel of the spot. The traffic of one of the world's busiest cities streams past a soldier's actual resting place, most passersby never knowing it.
It makes a natural first stop on a walk through this stretch of the city, a small island of early-republic memory wedged into a thoroughly modern streetscape. Give it a few minutes, read the dates, and let the distance between 1794 and the skyline around you do its quiet work.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- 81 Leonard Gallery1.9 mi away
- Gerben Fine Art2.0 mi away
- Bureau2.1 mi away · 112 Duane Street
- Hall des Lumières2.2 mi away · 49 Chambers Street, New York, NY
- Cloud Gallery2.2 mi away
- MĒRCER LABS2.5 mi away · 21 Dey Street
Attractions
- The River Project Wetlab1.6 mi away
- FDNY Ladder 81.9 mi away · 14 North Moore Street, New York
- Cortlandt Alley1.9 mi away
- Dream house1.9 mi away
- Chinatown1.9 mi away
- Textile building2.0 mi away
Food & drink
- Maman3.0 mi away
- Sweetgreen3.0 mi away
- Semicolon Cafe3.1 mi away
- Greene Hook Bar & Kitchen3.1 mi away
- Bluestone Lane3.1 mi away
- Yaso3.1 mi away · 30 Hudson Street, Jersey City, NJ
Places to stay
- Conrad2.4 mi away · 102 North End Avenue, New York
- M Social Hotel New York Downtown2.5 mi away · 55 Church Street, New York, NY
- Residence Inn New York Downtown Manhattan/World Trade Center Area2.5 mi away · 170 Broadway, New York, NY
- Holiday Inn2.6 mi away · 51 Nassau Street
- The Cloud One New York-Downtown2.6 mi away · 133 Greenwich Street, New York, NY
- World Center Hotel2.6 mi away · 144 Washington Street, New York, NY
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William Jenkins Worth
Related events
- · War of 1812
- · Mexican-American War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Northwest Ordinance
New York, NY
This monument marks lower Manhattan ground where the Congress of the Confederation sat in the 1780s, when New York City served as the young nation's capital. On July 13, 1787, that Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, a landmark law organizing the vast territory north and west of the Ohio River. It laid out how raw frontier land would be surveyed, settled, and eventually admitted to the Union — and famously encouraged schools and the spread of knowledge across that new country.
Herman Melville
New York, NY
The American author Herman Melville lived at this East 26th Street address from 1863 to 1891, the long, quiet final chapter of his life. Largely forgotten by the reading public after Moby-Dick, he worked for years as a customs inspector while still writing. Here he composed Billy Budd, a masterwork left unpublished at his death and rediscovered decades later.
Free Academy (Baruch College)
New York, NY
By the 1840s New York was a booming commercial city drawing waves of immigrants, and reformer Townsend Harris believed their children deserved a shot at higher learning. In 1849 his campaign bore fruit here with the opening of the Free Academy—a tuition-free public college "for the poor man's children"—which began with a class of 149. Renamed the College of the City of New York in 1866, it grew into today's Baruch College, a global name in business education.
Thomas Wolfe
New York, NY
The sprawling, autobiographical novelist Thomas Wolfe (1900–1936) spent the last years of his short life at the Chelsea Hotel, the Manhattan haven for writers and artists. Author of Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River, he poured out prose of enormous ambition and emotional force before dying at just thirty-seven. His American publishers, Scribner's and Harper, placed this plaque to honor him where he had lived and worked.