Christopher Columbus and his monument Columbia : $b being a concordance of choice tributes to the great Genoese, his grand discovery, and his greatness of mind and purpose
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Christopher Columbus and his monument Columbia : $b being a concordance of choice tributes to the great Genoese, his grand discovery, and his greatness of mind and purpose
Is there any one so foolish as to believe that there are antipodes with
their feet opposite to ours; that there is a part of the world in which
all things are topsy-turvy, where the trees grow with their branches
downward, and where it rains, hails, and snows upward?
THE LAKE FRONT PARK STATUE OF COLUMBUS.
The World's Fair city is a close competitor with the historic cities of
the Old World for the grandest monument to Columbus and the fittest
location for it. At Barcelona, on the Paseo Colon, seaward, a snowy
marble Admiral looks toward the Shadowy Sea. At Genoa, 'mid the palms of
the Piazza Acquaverde, a noble representation of the noblest Genoese
faces the fitful gusts of the Mediterranean and fondly guards an Indian
maid. A lofty but rude cairn marks the Admiral's first footprints on the
shores of the wreck-strewn Bahamas, and many a monument or encomiastic
inscription denotes spots sacred to the history of his indomitable
resolve. These all commemorate, as it were, but the inception of the
great discovery. It remains for Chicago to perpetuate the results, and
most fitly to place an heroic figure of the first Admiral viewing, and
in full view of all.
On the Lake Front Park, in full view of the ceaseless commercial
activity of the Great Lakes, and close by the hum of the hive of human
industry, grandly will a bronze Columbus face the blasts from Michigan's
bosom. There the greatest navigator stands,
Calm, his prescience verified,
proudly through the ages watching the full fruits of that first and
fateful voyage over the waves of the seas of mystery, to found a nation
where Freedom alone should be supreme. Just where the big monument will
be located on Lake Front Park has not been decided, but a site south of
the Auditorium, midway between the Illinois Central tracks and Michigan
Boulevard, will perhaps be chosen. The statue proper will be twenty feet
high. It will be of bronze, mounted on a massive granite pedestal, of
thirty feet in height, and will serve for all time as a memorial of the
Exposition.
The chosen artist, out of the many who submitted designs, was Mr. Howard
Kretschmar, a Chicago sculptor of rare power and artistic talent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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