Fountain of Time - Planning

Planning

Fountain of Time in Lorado Taft Midway Studios in 1915

Time, along with many other public works in Chicago, was funded by Benjamin Ferguson's 1905 gift of $1 million ($25.9 million today), to a charitable trust formed to "memorialize events in American History". Lorado Taft initially conceived a sculpture carved from granite; an alternative plan was to have it chiseled out of Georgia marble, which it is estimated would have cost $30,000 ($705,455) a year for five years. The planned work was intended as part of a Midway beautification which was to include a stream, lagoons, and a series of bridges: a Bridge of Arts at Woodlawn Avenue, a Bridge of Religion at the intersection of Ellis Avenue, and a Bridge of Science at Dorchester Avenue (formerly Madison Avenue). As part of the plan, the two ends of the Midway were to be connected by a canal in the deep depressions linking lagoons in Jackson and Washington Parks.

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood, and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans: aim high in hope and work ..."

Daniel Burnham

In 1907, Taft had won the first commission from the Ferguson Fund to create the Fountain of the Great Lakes at the Art Institute of Chicago. Immediately afterwards, inspired by Daniel Burnham's "Make no little plans" quote, he begin lobbying for a grand Midway beautification plan. In 1912, Art Institute Trustee Frank G. Logan formally presented Taft's plans to the fund's administrators at the Art Institute of Chicago. Taft's proposed Midway Plaisance beautification plan included two possible commemoration themes. His first choice was to honor the memory of the World's Columbian Exposition that had been held in Jackson Park in 1893. His alternative was to commemorate the centennial of the 1814 Treaty of Ghent "marking a century of perfect understanding between England and America". Since other plans to commemorate the Exposition were under way, the second theme choice was adopted as the justification for a second Taft commission from the Ferguson Fund. Contemporary newspaper accounts anticipated that Taft's entire Midway beautification plan would be approved easily.

Taft's initial commission from the trust was limited to the creation of a full-sized plaster model of Fountain of Time, under a five-year $10,000 ($235,152) annual installment contract signed on February 6, 1913. This would enable the model to be evaluated in 1918. Taft first created a 20-foot (6.1 m) quarter-scale model which received the Trustees' approval in May 1915. He eventually produced his full-scale plaster model, 100 feet (30.5 m) in width peaking in the center, with an equestrian warrior and a robed model of Father Time with a height of 20 feet (6.1 m). The installation of this model near its intended location was delayed by Taft's World War I service with the Y.M.C.A. in France as part of a corps of entertainers and lecturers, but was completed in 1920. However, Taft's wider vision of a Chicago school of sculpture, analogous to other philosophical Chicago schools such as the contemporaneous Chicago school of architecture style, had lost momentum after the 1913 dedication of his Fountain of the Great Lakes. The Beaux Arts style had become dated; instead of funding Taft's large-scale Midway Plaisance beautification plan, and providing the originally planned granite, bronze or Georgia marble materials, the trust only allocated sufficient funds and support for a concrete sculpture.

Time was intended to be matched by a sister fountain, Fountain of Creation, on the opposite end of the Midway. Work was begun but was never completed. The finished portions of Fountain of Creation, depicting figures from the Greek legend of the repopulation of earth after the great flood, are considered Taft's final work, and were given to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, his alma mater. The four surviving elements are figures ranging in height from 5 to 7 feet (1.5 to 2.1 m), and are collectively named Sons and Daughters of Deucalion and Pyrrha. Two of these elements stand outside the entrance to the university's Main Library, and two others are located at the south side of Foellinger Auditorium.