History
The DeKalb County Civil War Memorial and the sculpture that adorns it was created by an unknown sculptor and installed in front of the DeKalb County Courthouse in 1896. The county-owned memorial stands on the public square in Sycamore, the county seat and is 50 feet (15.2 m) tall. The structure was dedicated on June 24, 1897 as a memorial to the 2,388 people from DeKalb County who served in the military during the American Civil War.
In July 2005 the statues adorning the monument underwent a restoration. DeKalb County appropriated US$15,000 for the project which, among other tasks, repaired a split seam in one of the soldier statues and a crack in the other sculpture's base. The project took approximately six months; the statues were removed for the duration of the restoration work and reinstalled in March 2006. During the restoration it was revealed that the statues, thought to be bronze, were actually copper. The work, the first in the 110-year history of the memorial, was completed at a cost of $16,500. Three months after the work was completed one of the statues was removed for a second time because the metal began to oxidize.
Read more about this topic: Civil War Memorial (Sycamore, Illinois)
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