History of The Pylons

The noted American sculptor Milton Horn was commissioned in 1954 to create a visual history of the healing arts for the proposed West Virginia University Medical Center. He produced eight panels in high relief, each three by seven feet, depicting important developments and personages in the history of medicine, dentistry, nursing and pharmacy. They are carved in white Georgia marble on each face of four 15-foot pylons at the entrance to the Health Sciences Center. For well over a year, the artist worked under a canvas canopy while his wife read from the Bible. People would come and watch and he would discuss politics, religion, or anything else—all the time, chiseling away and becoming quite a celebrity.

• The Artist - Milton Horn, 1982

• The Panels

Cyrus E. Silling of Charleston, architect for the Medical Center, chose Mr. Horn to do the sculptures. The artist took a year for study and research in health sciences history, collaborating with his wife Estelle, before beginning the work. Horn recalls that his study was so thorough that eventually he was able to discuss medical history on a equal basis with the distinguished committee that supervised the project, and the School of Medicine faculty—some of whose members doubted that a mere artist could make the right choices.

The work was completed and the reliefs installed in October, 1956, and the Basic Sciences Building opened the following summer. The adjoining WVU Hospital, which completed the Medical Center, admitted its first patients in 1960.

All but one of the reliefs are divided generally into an upper and a lower section, allowing Horn to depict 15 milestones from the beginning of health sciences to the 20^th century. There are familiar figures like Hippocrates, Aristotle, Harvey, and Pasteur. There are scriptural references about the apothecary and social hygiene laws. Developments in nursing and dentistry also are portrayed.

Horn said his problem was to create reliefs of monumental quality to act as an architectural accent at the main entrance to the academic building.

"These works transcend mere illustration," he said. "Rather, they portray the spirit. At times one panel symbolizes events that occurred a century or more apart, yet there is unity in each panel and in all of them together."

The artist noted that it was architect Silling who proposed the reliefs "because he realized that such a magnificent building should have art to inspire those who would be using its facilities. Without his insistence, the great history of health sciences would be unfelt by students except in classroom work."

The plaster models were later donated by Horn in memory of his wife to the Charleston Division of the School of Medicine. In 1983, Horn revisited the Medical Center and was startled that the pylons were not covered with graffiti. Many of his other works, located in large cities around the world, had been defaced.