His most famous works are the marble lions, nicknamed Patience and Fortitude, in front of the New York Public Library Main Branch Born in New London, Connecticut, he grew up in Enfield, Massachusetts, where he lived with his mother Mary and sister Clara.

From 1887 to 1889 he studied sculpture at the Académie Julian in Paris with Antonin Mercié and Emmanuel Frémiet, becoming an accomplished animalier (animal sculptor).

Unfortunately these statues, like most of the architecture of the fair, were made of staff, a temporary material of plaster, cement, and jute fibers, first used in buildings of the Paris exhibition in 1878.

His most famous work is the pair of pink Tennessee marble lions in front of the New York Public Library Main Branch, carved by the Piccirilli brothers.

The lions were originally nicknamed "Leo Astor" and "Leo Lenox", for the two private libraries that formed the collection's core, but mayor Fiorello La Guardia renamed them for qualities New Yorkers were showing in weathering the Great Depression—Patience (on the left or south) and Fortitude (on the right or north)—and those names have stuck.