Girl Skating

"The people of the East Side to me are like the rough boulder. They have broken off the mountain of humanity in all their primal crudity. They are real, rugged, unpolished, entirely free."

--Abastenia St. Léger Eberle, 1916

Who is this young girl, screaming with delight as she speeds downhill on a roller skate?

She was likely the child of an immigrant family living on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where Abastenia St. Léger Eberle worked at a community center for children. Eberle often sculpted scenes of everyday life she observed in her working-poor neighborhood, which was composed mainly of Italian, Slavic, and ethnic Jewish immigrants. Both Eberle and her patrons viewed these communities as amusing and exotic.

At a time when "White" was narrowly identified as "Anglo-Saxon," Southern and Eastern European immigrants would not have been considered such. As with all racial categories, the social construction of whiteness has changed over time. As various European ethnic groups arrived in the United States, they gradually became White as they accumulated power and the concept of whiteness expanded through the events and policies of the twentieth century.

Label text from The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture November 8, 2024 -- September 14, 2025

Abastenia Eberle created several bronze casts of Girl Skating (also known as Roller Skating or Girl with Roller Skate). A year after she was elected to the National Sculpture Society, Eberle exhibited Girl Skating in New York City and Philadelphia. As her first piece that displayed the children of Manhattan's streets, it marked the beginning of her focus on urban poverty. Eberle addressed social issues in this sculpture while capturing the spirit of these poor communities. Girl Skating's uneven surfaces accentuate the girl's tattered appearance, yet her outstretched arms and open-mouthed expression still convey joy and the thrill of play.

"The children of the East side play without restraint; their griefs and their joys are expressed with absolute abandon. . . . They laugh loudly. They shout. They race on roller skates and dance unrestrainedly. I can get at the human quality in these children. They are real— real as can be. They express life." The artist, quoted in the Washington Post, 1906