History
A part of Augustus Woodward's plan to rebuild the city after the fire of 1805, the city established the park in 1850. The Detroit Opera House faces Grand Circus Park. The grounds include antique statuary and old-fashioned water fountains. Near this historic site, General George Armstrong Custer delivered a eulogy for thousands gathered to mourn the death of President Abraham Lincoln. Architect Henry Bacon designed the Russell Alger Memorial Fountain (1921) in Grand Circus Park. Bacon's other projects include the Lincoln Memorial (1915–1922) in Washington, DC. The fountain contains a classic Roman figure symbolizing Michigan by American sculptor Daniel French who sculpted Abraham Lincoln inside the Lincoln Memorial.
The half-moon shaped park is divided down its center by Woodward Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare. Its eastern half is anchored by the Alger Fountain and capped on its north western edge with a statue of William Cotter Maybury. Its western half is anchored by the Edison Fountain and capped on its north eastern edge with a statue of Hazen Pingree.
Among the notable buildings encircling the park are the David Broderick Tower and David Whitney Building on the south, Kales Building, and Central United Methodist Church on the north, and Comerica Park and Detroit Opera House on the East.
Read more about this topic: Grand Circus Park Historic District
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)