The Statue of the Republic is a 24-foot-high (7.3 m) gilded bronze sculpture in Jackson Park, Chicago, Illinois. The statue was built in 1918 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago and the Illinois statehood centennial. The statue was funded by the Benjamin Ferguson Fund., which commissioned Daniel Chester French, the sculptor of the original 65-foot-tall (20 m) statue that stood on the grounds of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, to sculpt this smaller replica. Henry Bacon, architect of the Lincoln Memorial, designed the pedestal for the 1918 Republic.
The original statue stood in front of the Court of Honor at the World's Columbian Exposition. However, in 1896, the original 65-foot statue succumbed to a fire, destroying it. The current statue stands on the site of the Exposition's famous Electricity Building.
The statue is widely known in Chicago by the colloquial name of the "Golden Lady." It was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 4, 2003.
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Famous quotes containing the words statue of, statue and/or republic:
“The Statue of Liberty is meant to be shorthand for a country so unlike its parts that a trip from California to Indiana should require a passport.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The consolations of space are nameless things.
It was after the neurosis of winter. It was
In the genius of summer that they blew up
The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds.
It took all day to quieten the sky
And then to refill its emptiness again....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)