Jerzy Waszyngton, Warsaw

At Washington Roundabout in Saska Kępa, the object before you is a monument to George Washington: a bronze portrait bust rising from a granite base. Washington became the first president of the United States, and this Warsaw likeness takes its cue from the familiar portrait on the dollar note. The base is assembled from separate, sharply cut stone blocks rather than treated as a single solid mass.

That fractured arrangement was devised as an abstract version of the American flag. The sculpture was made by Bronisław Koniuszy, while Bronisław Kubica designed the monument’s base and overall scheme. A local branch of the Friends of Warsaw Society initiated the project, and Edward Moskal, who led the Polish American Congress, unveiled it on the twenty-seventh of October nineteen eighty-nine.

The inscription on the upper stone uses Jerzy Waszyngton, the traditional Polish form of Washington’s name, with his birth and death years beneath. It is a compact civic gesture: Warsaw’s American president rendered in metal, supported by a piece of stonework that quietly turns a national flag into sculpture.