Giants in the Park: A Guide to Portrait Statues in Chicago's Lincoln Park, Secon

Giants in the Park: A Guide to Portrait Statues in Chicago's Lincoln Park, Secon by Krista August. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780996432306.

Awarded 2011 Book of the Year by the Chicagos Writers Association and with a 2014 Certificate of Excellence from the Illinois State Historical Society, “Giants in the Park” is a history guide for the monuments in Lincoln Park, Chicago’s largest and historically most important park. Giants encountered with this walking tour guidebook include Lincoln, La Salle, Grant, Sheridan, Schiller, Goethe, Altgeld … seventeen portrait statues in all. Missing monuments and salient park history are documented as well. "Lincoln the Man" is the most important statue on the tour and is a masterpiece of Augustus Saint Gaudens, the ranking American sculptor of the era. The bronze of the French explorer La Salle is the most significant, in the park, to Chicago’s early history. At its unveiling in 1889, La Salle was celebrated as the man “to whose geographical discoveries American civilization owes a heavy debt.” The history behind each and every monument is unique and exciting. Throughout the book, surprising connections exist, to a wide variety of topics and early Chicago personalities: the Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Haymarket affair, the Great Chicago Fire, the Civil War, early Chicago ethnic groups, the park’s cemetery years, Charles Yerkes, Frances Willard, Mayor Carter Harrison and much more. Lincoln Park’s monumental art invites us to explore the old: to study the heroes of our Chicago forefathers; and through examining the realization of their likenesses, to glimpse moments and ideals from our great citys youth.