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| Not exactly what Kate B. had in mind (JWB Photo) |
I hate to get
started on this again because every time I look out my window, it’s a source of
aggravation. And in every trip I take on
the old 151 I get a tad steamed up as we pass the junction of Stockton and
Sheridan. It is there that a forlorn
Alexander Hamilton stands, peeling gold leaf, a sculpture that began with such
great promise and which now stands atop a puny base of red granite, looking out
on the sunbathers and leaping dogs.
If you want to know
the whole sordid tale, you can find it here.
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| Kate Struges Buckingham Art Institue of Chicago Image |
It was on this day
back in 1942 that the executors and trustees of the late Kate Sturges
Buckingham’s $4,000,000 estate were charged with allowing a one million dollar
trust fund that the benefactress had set up for the creation of a memorial to
Alexander Hamilton to revert to the Art Institute rather than seeing that it got used for
its original purpose.
The fund had been set up aspart of the Miss Buckingham's will.
Upon her death on December 14, 1937 that will stipulated that the memorial was to be built within
ten years or the fund would revert to the Art Institute. The 1942 suit, filed by the State’s Attorney
because the memorial fund was a public charitable trust, alleged that the
trustees of the fund, some of who were also executors of Miss Buckingham’s will
and officers of the Art Institute “conspired and confederated . . . to the end
that all or substantially all of the million dollar fund, together with the 10
years accumulated, be paid to the Art Institute for unrestricted use.”
The suit went on to
demand that the trustees of the fund be made to carry out contracts made by
Miss Buckingham before her death with Eliel Saarinen . . . and John Angel, the
sculptor. At this point, in fact, Mr. Angel's sculpture had already been cast.
If the suit had
only worked . . . How cool would it be to look out my window and see Alexander
Hamilton standing in an 80-foot tall architectural enclosure designed by Eliel
Saarinen!
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| The Saarinen design commissioned by Kate Buckingham (JWB Photo taken at Art Institute of Chicago exhibit) |
Architect Samuel
Marx did design a tall polished granite setting for the sculpture that was
dedicated in July of 1952. It lasted 41
yeas before it was torn down in 1993.
“Those who stand
for nothing fall for anything,” Hamilton once observed. It seems wrong to me, somehow, that a man who
stood for so much, who many argue gave the young nation the financial footing
and philosophical underpinning that allowed it to develop, has seen his
memorial fall so far.
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