Lorado Taft’s Fountain of Creation

After the Fair, the Olmsted Sons redid the Midway so it had the eastbound road, the westbound road, and the panels. The railroad was still up on trestles from the Fair. The plan was to have a canal from Jackson Park lagoons, flowing under the railroad and cross-street bridges, ending up in the Washington Park mere. They started to dig the center panels, but the city realized that they needed a system of locks because of the fluctuating lake water levels and there was no money.

Soon, the city required railroads to avoid grade-level crossings. The Illinois Central made the raised tracks permanent, filling in the trestles with dirt and making the embankments solid.

Meanwhile, Lorado Taft had a Vision! He wanted a canal, but it would flow from the Fountain of Creation next to the track embankment to the Fountain of Time. Water would flow into the Washington Park mere via a small waterfall. The cross streets—Ellis, Woodlawn, and Dorchester—would have ornate bridges: one for Science, one for Art, and one for Religion.

This, I think is where the university got the idea for the Light Bridges to help tie the Midway together.

Along the side panels of the Midway, Taft wanted a series of statues to Great Chicagoans and other iconic men in the arts, sciences, philosophy, etc. He was planning on 40-100 statues, each one 10 feet tall, standing on an 8 foot tall base, carved by many artists. In a sense, the lone statue of Linnaeus gives an idea of what might have been.

Lorado Taft got money for the Fountain of Time first. It’s enormous—80 figures, 120 feet long, 18 feet high, 14 feet wide. He wanted to execute it in marble, but he literally couldn’t get a bid. It seems to have been just too big. Instead, he hooked up with a guy named John Joseph Earley who was experimenting with concrete. They were sure it would last forever, but of course erosion from acid rain demonstrated the hand of Time too well. It looked so crisp in 1922 when it was dedicated.

Undated Chicago Tribune article, but it seems to be 1922.

Taft planned the Fountain of Creation to be slightly smaller and in marble. It had 38 10-foot-tall figures, against the backdrop of the railroad embankment, where the Blanik Knight stands now.

The gaps between groups would have been waterfalls.

It’s the myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha. Zeus got sick of how horrible humans are and wiped them out with a great flood. The only decent humans were Deucalion and Pyrrha, who survived on a boat. When they stepped on dry land, they wept with grief until Hermes took pity and told them to throw the bones of their mother over their shoulders. They decided he meant mother earth, so threw stones. Deucalion’s stones became men and Pyrrha’s stones became women.

The figures at the bottom of the fountain are just emerging from the earth, being part boulder, part human. The figures become more human, more aware, until the top group stands erect. I have to say though that the fully human group at the top doesn’t look very happy about the idea.

Taft made full-scale plaster statues, while he looked for funding he never got.

Only four of the figures were carved in stone. They appeared at the 1933 Century of Progress and were donated to the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, where they sit near the library. They are from the lower group of the people just emerging--two daughters of Pyrrha and two sons of Deucalion.

 

Almost all of the information and most of the images are from Lorado Taft: The Chicago Years by Allen Stuart Weller (edited by Robert G. La France, and Henry Adams).