File:High School Centennial Arch and Skoi-yase Monument at Lafayette Park, Waterloo, New York - 20210710 - 01.jpg

English: As seen on a July 2021 afternoon, this view over Lafayette Park in the center of the village of Waterloo, New York comprises two of the historic monuments that are peppered throughout the space. The obelisk at left "was erected in September 1879 to commemorate the destruction of the [Cayuga] village Skoi-yase by Col. John Harper, under order of Maj. Gen. John Sullivan, September 8, 1779." For its part, the limestone arch at right commemorates the history of secondary education in Waterloo, which began in 1838 with the founding of the Waterloo Academy, whose successor is seen in the background at right. Explanatory plaques placed on its sides note that the monument "was formed by combining two portals from the 1901 addition to the original high school building. Upon demolition of the school in 1928, Herman F. Brehm moved them to his property west of the village where they were joined to form an arch. Donated to the Waterloo Central School Centennial Committee in 1986, the arch was dismantled and reconstructed... in Lafayette Park." The park itself dates to the village's earliest history, having been set aside by founding fathers Elisha Williams and Reuben Swift as land that must remain public and never be built on. Over the years it has been the site of many of the pivotal events of Waterloo's history: it owes its name to its status as the site of the village's official welcome to the Marquis de Lafayette on the occasion of his visit in 1825, and it was the site of a 1966 proclamation by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was in the village to officialize its status as the birthplace of the American holiday of Decoration Day, or Memorial Day, in 1866. (This claim is refuted in the book The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday in America, written in 2014 by Dr. Richard Gardiner and Daniel Bellware, both residents of Columbus, Georgia, a rival claimant to the title of Memorial Day birthplace.)