Monday, June 28, 2010

Chicago West / Jacques Marquette Memorial (1926) - by Hermon Atkins MacNeil

Jacques Marquette Memorial


Jacques Marquette Memorial
By Hermon Atkins MacNeil

1926

Location: Intersection of Marshall Bouleward and 24th Street
Chicago, IL

Funded by the B.F. Ferguson Monument Fund

The words etched are..
This memorial erected by the trustees of the B.F.Ferguson Monument Fund to commemorate the discoveries and sacrifieces of the missionary Pere Marquette.
Dedicated MCMXXVI






Jacques Marquette Memorial



Jacques Marquette Memorial





Jaques Marquette (1637-1675) , the Jesuit expolorer-priest is shown here 
with Louis Joliet (1645 - 1700) and an Algonquin Indian. 


The book, "A Guide to Chicago's Public Art", by Ira J. Bach, and Mary Lackritz Gray, has some further information on this memorial..
An excerpt..
The three are depicted at the moment in the summer of 1673, when the French man, guided along the ancient Indian portage that linked the Des Plaines River with the South Branch of the Chicago river, recongized that a canal at this point would link the entire Great Lakes system with the Mississippi watershed . Today the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, south of this point, makes that connection..




Jacques Marquette Memorial / Jacques Marquette 




Jacques Marquette Memorial /  Louis Joliet





Jacques Marquette Memorial / Algonquin Indian





Jacques Marquette Memorial


Jacques Marquette Memorial


No comments: