Exedra

The original Greek word ἐξέδρα ('a seat out of doors') was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for conversation.

A basilica featured a large exedra at the far end from its entrance, where the magistrates sat, usually raised up several steps, in hearing cases.

In Muslim architecture, the exedra becomes a mihrab and invariably retains religious associations, wherever it is seen, even on the smallest scale, as a prayer niche.

A classic example of a Baroque exedra on a (comparatively) reduced scale within its context, is the central niche of the Trevi Fountain in Rome, sheltering a statue of Neptune.

The Spreckels Temple of Music in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is another example of such a free-standing classicized bandshells Public monuments without any covering use a freestanding semicircular exedra with a bench, often to give a platform to a statue, for example at Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State monument in Grant Park (Chicago), the Houdini grave in New York, and the Signing of the Mayflower Compact Bas Relief in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

[8][9] Its architect was Eric Gugler, and in 1932 it was executed by the Piccirilli Brothers studio, the firm that carved the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.[8]