Refurbishing the “Statue of the Republic”

The replica Statue of the Republic that stands in Jackson Park to commemorate the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition is getting a new coat.

Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times on March 31, 2026, architectural critic Lee Bey reports that a $1 million restoration project will repair the sculpture, remove worn and flaking gold leaf, and apply a new layer of the micro-thin substance over the entire work (“Jackson Park’s ‘Gold Lady’ could look like a million again, thanks to a planned restoration”) “The work still shines, but not like it once did,” Lee writes.

The 108-year-old statue is the most prominent monument to the great 1893 World’s Fair held in Jackson Park. It is a reduction of the original sixty-five-foot tall golden colossus representing liberty that stood on a thirty-five-foot pedestal in the Grand Basin of the Court of Honor. Designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French, the Republic was the largest statue ever built in America up to that time and became a shining symbol of the Fair. But it was designed to be temporary. On August 28, 1896, the original plaster Republic, then in a sad state of decay, was torched by the Park District [Read more at “Death of the Republic: The fiery end to the golden colossus of the 1893 World’s Fair”.] Using funds remaining from the Directors of the World’s Columbian Exposition, French was commissioned in 1915 to create the commemorative version. As America entered World War I, the smaller, twenty-four-foot-high, Republic statue was cast in bronze. It is a near replica of the original, with the Phrygian cap on top of the staff in the left hand replaced by a placard proclaiming liberty.

In 1918, the new Republic took her place inside of an ignoble traffic circle at the intersection of E. Hayes and S. Richards Drives, just a few feet from where Carl Rohl-Smith’s statue of Benjamin Franklin stood at the south entrance to the Electricity Building during the Fair. (Not quite on the site of the former Administration Building, as is commonly reported.) The sculpture stands on a 10-foot-high granite pedestal designed by architect Henry Bacon and faces east instead of west as the original did. Several Columbian Exposition officials participated in a grand dedication ceremony held on May 11. The “Golden Lady,” however, was spray-painted bronze on her birthday. Gilding came the following summer.

As the Columbian Exposition centennial approached in 1993, the replica Republic was in disgraceful condition—blotched, grimy, and wobbly. A $46,000 restoration project in 1992 repaired some corrosion problems caused by the initial paint removal and brought her back a glorious golden appearance by applying some 25,000 gold leaves. City Council awarded the statue landmark designation on June 5, 2003.

For this new restoration project, Lee reports that:

“Workers will remove all of the existing gold leaf then laser clean and repair the entire sculpture. Then they’ll put on an epoxy primer, a base layer, a polymer base—both gold-colored—and an adhesive. Next, the 2 mm-thick gold leaf, somewhere between 12,000 to 15,000 pieces, will be applied by hand, almost like laying on the fixings of a submarine sandwich.”

Additional work to restore Bacon’s base and to add lighting is being considered.

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