The Chicago Public Library Blog post “World’s Fair Replicas in Chicago Parks” offers a brief review of four replica sculptures from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition that can be seen today in various Chicago Parks. These include Daniel Chester French‘s Statue of the Republic (1918 replica) in Jackson Park, George Wade’s Fountain Girl (2012 replica) in Lincoln Park, and Edward Kemey‘s Prairie King and Sound of the Whoop bison (1911 replicas).
Other statues from the 1893 World’s Fair grace other Chicago parks. Bull and Indian Maiden and Bull and Ceres, both by Daniel Chester French and Edward C. Potter, stand behind the Garfield Park Conservatory. Plaster versions of the these sculptures stood on the Grand Basin of the fairgrounds in 1893. A statue of William Shakespeare by William Ordway Partridge is installed near the Lincoln Park Zoo; Ordway exhibited a plaster replica of his statue in the Palace of Fine Arts at the fair. Also exhibited in the Art Palace in 1893 was A Signal of Peace by Cyrus Dallin, which after the fair was installed further north in Lincoln Park. A statue of Christopher Columbus by Moses Ezekiel, which may have been exhibited at the fair, stood in a fountain in Chicago’s Arrigo Park from 1966 to 2020.
Bull and Indian Maiden by Daniel Chester French and Edward C. Potter in plaster on the 1893 fairgrounds of the Columbian Exposition (top) and recast in bronze in Garfield Park (bottom). [Top image from Picturesque World’s Fair (W.B. Conkey, 1894) and bottom photo by worldsfairchicago1893.com]