Alexander Hamilton Monument (in Lincoln Park)

In addition to donating the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain, philanthropist and art patron Kate Sturges Buckingham (1858 – 1937) commissioned a monument to the Alexander Hamilton (1757 – 1804) whom she considered “one of the least appreciated great Americans.” Miss Buckingham believed that as the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton had secured the nation’s financial future and made it possible for her own family to make its fortune in grain elevators and banking. She hired New York artist John Angel to model a figurative sculpture of Hamilton and the famous Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen to create a colossal architectural setting for the monument. Saarinen’s proposed 80-foot tall columned shelter was not well received, and by the time Kate Buckingham died in 1937, the sculpture’s setting and location were uncertain.

Several years passed, and executors of Buckingham’s estate and trustees for the monument were accused of conspiring to allow the project’s time limit to expire so that the money would revert to the Art Institute. After the courts ordered the construction to be completed by 1953, the trustees moved swiftly by hiring architect Samuel A. Marx to design a tall granite setting for the monument’s the newly selected Lincoln Park site. The trustees also decided to gild the bronze statue in gold. Marx’s 78-foot tall cantilevered granite exedra overwhelmed the sculpture. After engineering studies revealed that the sculpture’s architectural setting had structural design flaws, it was demolished in 1993. Today, the gilded Hamilton sits on the simple red granite base that was previously mounted to the modern exedra structure.