David Wallach and His Fountain

 

The David Wallach Fountain (taken 2018)

I love walking through the 55th Street tunnel to the Point and seeing the David Wallach Fountain. But who was David Wallach? Is he a good person to be guarding the park? 

I went on the search and found out that David Wallach was born in Prussia in 1832, immigrated to the United States at 18, and moved to Rockford to run a store with his brother. By the 1860s, Rockford apparently seemed a bit small and slow. He moved on to the ever-expanding Chicago nearby. He had done well enough for himself that he became a partner with Cahn, Wampole & Co., wholesale clothing manufacturers based in Chicago. He accumulated a small fortune. 

Sketch of David Wallach (Chicago Chronicle, November 5, 1895)

After his retirement from the firm in 1891, he was apparently a bit bored and started up a photographic supply business. That apparently is why the Park District identifies that as his call to fame, but he died just two years after starting Sweet, Wallach, & Co. and it doesn't seem to have survived his death. The only trace I found was an 1892 catalog in the National Museum of American History archives. 

At his death in 1894, the Cook County Death Index called him a “capitalist.” He called himself a “wholesale clothing merchant,” but I’d label him “philanthropist.” After his death, the Chicago Chronicle said that, despite Wallach’s wish for quiet giving, the board of every charity in the city knew him and knew that, if they reached out, it was never in vain. It's not surprising. He was a member of Chicago Sinai Congregation, whose influential rabbi, Emil G. Hirsch, inspired his congregation to address the social ills of the day. Hirsch was a professor at the University of Chicago. Another member of the congregation was Julius Rosenwald. 

Wallach’s will made some of his philanthropy visible. Among the bequests were ones to Michael Reese Hospital, the Institute for Crippled and Destitute Children, and homes for the elderly. The biggest gift, about 10% of his estate, went to the Chicago Orphan Asylum. The need was great because smallpox and cholera epidemics orphaned children throughout the 19th century. He didn’t just give cash. He also gave his time, bringing the children treats because he wanted them to have some joy. 

After Wallach’s death, his close friend, Dr. Edmund J. Doering, wanted the children to remember “their staunchest supporter” so he endowed an annual “David Wallach Day” with puppet shows, magicians, ice cream, and cake for the 200 children. But the annual day faded away in a few years, which often happens to memorials that rely on institutional memory.

There was one donation in Wallach’s will that the Tribune made a fuss over. Upon his wife’s death, $5,000 ($159,000 in 2021 dollars) would finance a fountain for “men and beasts” at a location south of 22nd Street, north of 33rd Street, and east of Michigan Avenue. Wallach had lived at 3332 S. Vernon. It was his gift to the working horses in his neighborhood and one he was willing to put his name on. 

But no fountain appeared. 

In 1914, his sister in New York wrote the mayor of Chicago asking why there wasn’t a fountain. The city scrambled to unearth the will. Alderman George F. Harding, Jr. (yes, the Harding who collected medieval armor) was delighted. Harding had gone to school with Wallach’s son, and he thought the intersection at 35th Street, Vincennes, and Cottage Grove in his ward would be perfect for a dramatic fountain. 

And yet, no fountain appeared. 

In 1937, Wallach’s heirs asked again. Lawsuits ensued. Once the dust settled, the heirs and the Park District formed a committee to find a location and a design. Wallach’s heirs were living in Hyde Park, in the Parkshore on 55th Street near South Shore Drive. They had watched Alfred Caldwell landscaping Promontory Point next door and thought the new park would be an ideal setting. The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars didn’t agree. They sued to move it to 47th Street. The judge tossed the case, saying the will specified 55th Street, which, of course, it hadn’t. Whatever their plans were, by the time the VFW and the Legion tried to get their hands on the will, it was too late. 

The Park District and the heirs held a design competition, which local artists, Frederick Hibbard and Elizabeth Haseltine Hibbard, won. Elizabeth Haseltine designed my favorite part, the fawn. Haseltine taught at the University of Chicago and assisted Lorado Taft. She was acclaimed for her Baby Pegasus sculpture, which she exhibited several times at the Art Institute. I suspect Baby Pegasus would have delighted Wallach, but Haseltine wanted something naturalistic to match Caldwell’s landscape. I also suspect the artists wanted a rounded shape atop the streamlined Art Deco base. 

The base, designed by Frederick Hibbard, is Dakota Mahogany granite. It’s polished to protect it from the weather even though it’s very hard rock billions of years old. They clearly wanted a monument that would last. By 1939, working horses were rare. There were bridle paths nearby, but the committee argued that horses couldn’t access the Point. They abandoned trying to fit a horse trough into the design. I have a theory that the horse trough interrupted their Art Deco streamlining. Instead, the committee accommodated “men and beasts” with a low basin for dogs and three drinking fountains sized for children.  

Certainly the Tribune huffed about it. They ran a headline that you could lead a horse to this fountain, but there was nowhere for a horse to drink. That's not entirely true. I have seen a horse drink from it, but it is better for birds, dogs, and children. I think David Wallach would have liked helping the children.

For more about Haseltine and the history of the fawn: Hyde Park Stories: Elizabeth Haseltine and the Fawn (trishmorse.blogspot.com)

Elizabeth Haseltine and the Fawn

University of Chicago Photographic Archive, [apf2-09143], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

As with so many women, it’s hard to find information about Elizabeth Haseltine (1894-1950). I have been looking because she’s the artist who created my favorite Hyde Park public art, the fawn on the top of the David Wallach fountain. Her husband, Frederick C. Hibbard (1881-1950) designed the base. I love the contrast of the naturalistic fawn and the Art Deco base. 

David Wallach had died in 1894, leaving money to the city for a fountain for “men and beasts.” Nothing happened. Finally, David Wallach’s heirs sued the Park District in the 1930s for an accounting. As a result, a committee for the fountain was formed of the Park District and the heirs. They launched a design competition. 

The competition was won by Frederick Hibbard and Elizabeth Haseltine Hibbard of 1201 East 60th Street near the Midway Studios of Lorado Taft. Haseltine taught at the University of Chicago and the Art Institute and assisted Lorado Taft. 

Originally in the Herald. Hibbard and Haseltine showing off the winning design from the Chicago Park District Special Collections

She specialized in statues of animals, studying the animals at Lincoln Park Zoo for inspiration. Haseltine had three sculptures in the newly finished 1935 Japanese garden: a squirrel, a kingfisher, and a great blue heron carved out of tulipwood and placed near the waterfall entering the lily pond. She liked to work from nature, spending hours at the Lincoln Park Zoo studying her subjects. 

Elizabeth Haseltine working on the clay mock up of the fawn. Tribune October 30, 1939

She exhibited regularly in a large annual art show. The Tribune critic called her statue of a cat “whimsical” and “clever.” One year she showed Pegasus as a colt. The Tribune critic said, “This is one of the most graceful and admirable figures one could find in a year’s search. It is delicate, true, simple, and fascinating.” Which is what I feel about the fawn.

The Point was created in the late 1920s when the lakefront was expanded. The photo at this link shows the landfill beginning: http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/10584.html

For a while it wasn't landscaped. The Shoreland valets used it as a parking lot for the guests. But in 1936, the WPA helped finance a new look--the tunnel under what was then called Leif Erickson Drive, electrical, water, and sewer systems, and a new landscape. Alfred Caldwell designed a landscape of an open meadow, native plants, and stone council circles.

As the Point took shape according to Caldwell's vision, the heirs of David Wallach, who were living in the Parkshore and had a front row seat for the changes, wanted David's fountain placed on the Point.

Frederick created the base  "along modernistic lines" using Dakota Mahogany granite mined near St. Cloud, Minnesota. There are three fountains for humans on each side and the back, and one fountain for "beasts" at the front. There are abstract floral motifs in the polished granite. The polish enables the stone to withstand the weather. It was dedicated in December 1939, and there the fawn slept through the USO picnics at the Point during the war, the huge crowds of sunbathers during the 1950s, and the Nike missile installation of the 1960s. There she slept until 1981, when she suddenly disappeared.

A dog walker came out from under the tunnel on October 21 and realized there was no fawn. The dog walker immediately contacted the alderman and the police. The Hyde Park Herald printed the fawn's picture and an anonymous donor offered $200 for her recovery.

Fawns sleep all tucked up under brush, even with predators stalking about. They won't move until their mothers return. Haseltine's fawn also waited. A Hyde Parker, poking around a salvage warehouse, suddenly spotted her tucked up and hiding among the architectural detritus. He called the alderman and the Area One crimes unit and the fawn was safe again. The thieves had gotten a mere $150 for it.

When it became known that she had been fenced to the salvage warehouse on October 8 and the full-time Park District supervisor whose office was in the Point fieldhouse hadn't noticed her missing for two whole weeks and hadn't bothered to report the park benches that had been chopped up and vandalized at the same time, the citizens of Hyde Park were incensed. As the Herald said, the patronage-ridden bureaucracy of the Parks could care less about a "small charming beloved landmark in a small charming beloved South Side park" and so the citizens organized the Friends of the Point. 

I first wrote a version of this post in 2010. Since then, a detailed account has appeared in a Hyde Park Historical Society article. Check out vol41nos123_autumn2019finalB.pdf (hydeparkhistory.org)

Grant Tree

The question of monuments was being much discussed in Chicago in 2020, with a commission contemplating removing or annotating many of the iconic works that are part of a Chicagoan’s mental map. Included on the list is the statue of Grant on horseback in Lincoln Park. Not on the list for the monuments commission is a monument to Grant that’s barely on anyone’s mental map—a small boulder with a carved message in the middle of the grass in Washington Park. It says "Tree Planted by Ulysses S. Grant December Sixth, 1879." There's no tree nearby, let alone one planted by Grant. 

It's located just south of 51st St. on Cottage Grove. Follow Payne Drive west. When you reach the armory turn right and follow a curving driveway into a parking lot. The boulder is north and slightly east of the parking lot.

Photo of a Boulder with a hard to read carving sitting near a parking lot. Photo by George Rumsey

So the search for answers took me through the shaky foundations of history, memory, and meaning--with a larger question that's been bothering me for a while, What do monuments do?

I suspect that for at least 80 years one approach has been to deny them power through general snark about the pompous past. Certainly that was Atlas Obscura’s answer to the meaning of the boulder—they created a story about Grant tossing some seeds in the ground to plant an oak (They could at least have gone for verisimilitude and had him toss acorns). I was suspicious that wasn't the answer to the boulder's question. A couple of seeds rarely turn into trees worthy of boulders. 

The first answer I hit in the Chicago Tribune was a very long article from 1899 interviewing a long-time fan of the tree. The article starts out, “Guarding the northeastern entrance to Washington Park stands a giant elm. Everybody admires it and a few regard it with sentiments of genuine affection. Its friends call it Grant’s elm. Few of the trees among the thousands in Chicago have more reason to rear themselves in proud solitude and to lord it over lesser growths. Old-timers in Chicago remember well the great Sanitary Fair in Dearborn Park in the spring of 1865. But best of all they remember the acclaim with which the victorious Generals Grant and Sherman were received at that fair and at the public reception in the old Crosby Opera House. But comparatively few recall the ceremonies which were carried out at that time in the pretty village of Hyde Park.” 

Photo of the lone elm tree without a boulder. The caption says it was planted in 1865. From the Chicago Tribune of 1899

I suspect few remember because it didn’t happen, not in 1865 anyway. There wasn't even a park in 1865. But Ephraim H. Cummings remembered. He’d been living in Chicago since 1837 and he told the journalist that his great concern was for the survival of the elm—because non-native trees don’t survive long in the Hyde Park sand. He remembered that it was his suggestion that the Grant elm be given a chance at survival by digging a basin in the clay that's under the sand, filling the basin with gravel and black earth. The article focuses on Cummings' conviction that trees need companions in order to be healthy and his argument that the elm needed companion trees. Now that scientists have researched how tree root systems communicate with each other through mycorrhiza, it's clear that's one thing Cummings got right.  

It seems fairly obvious in this 1899 account that there was no boulder monument to correct the great details that Cummings added to the story that didn’t happen. There's no sign of a boulder in the photo with the article. Perhaps this article triggered a movement to plant the boulder there. All I could find is that the boulder appeared "some years" after the tree was planted. 

By 1912, the boulder had been there a number of years. There’s a letter in the Tribune complaining that the boulder is wrong. The boulder at that time said that the tree had been planted in November 1879. Instead, it had clearly been planted in December and he'd found an article in the Tribune to prove it.

I can see why they got the date wrong if someone remembered the year. That fall of 1879, Grant was making a procession across the states, saying farewell to public life. The veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic and even the Mexican-American War were pouring into the cities by the thousands to say a passionate farewell to their leader. It would have made sense to have a ceremony then. The Tribune details event after event--parades, assemblies, speeches, banquets--that went on for days in November. But no tree. 

Instead, in December, the tour over, Grant returned to Chicago to spend time with his son, who lived in Chicago with his wife--the sister of Bertha Honoré Palmer. Grant's in-laws had one more event for him and 150 dignitaries, who gathered at the Palmer House to drive down to the park on the boulevards in their carriages and plant a tree. Several hundred locals gathered to watch as speeches were made. Grant said “I hope that in my future visits to your magnificent park I may see the tree which I am now about to plant growing and flourishing, and that in its growth it may be symbolical of the growth and prosperity of your magnificent city.” And with that, he threw a few shovelfuls of dirt into the hole with a nickel-plated shovel (not gold plated as Cummings remembered). Several of the others took the shovel and added their bit. The elm, which was held at a 30 degree angle by a windlass, was winched into its hole (which may or may not have had Cummings extra rich earth). The Tribune reporter of 1879 made a point of saying that the crowd was disappointed that lunch was not provided, being clearly disappointed himself.

Some time after 1912, the boulder and tree were worth a postcard, so it must have had some visitors. The flagpole is a nice touch.

 

Painted postcard of the elm, the boulder, and an American flag on a flagpole in the park, with the correct inscription, so it dates from after 1912. From Firmly Planted — U.S. Grant Cottage National Historic Landmark

Several accounts suggest the tree died in the 1930s, though without a date or details. Cummings was right to worry that it was lonely in its nutrient-poor sandy soil, however, it would have succumbed anyway in the 1970s when Dutch elm disease swept through the South Parks.

The Park District took the tree and left the boulder. In 1960, a person who stumbled across it, wrote to the Tribune, wondering what the story was. The Tribune didn’t bother to find out but ran this cartoon. 

Editorial cartoon of a man in a suit wondering, "Was it Washington in Grant Park?" next to the boulder. from the Chicago Tribune

The Park District decided to plant a Kentucky Coffee Tree there after the reporter asked about the boulder. But the Coffee Tree didn’t want to live in the lonely, nutrient-poor sand of Hyde Park either. 

So, it does show what some monuments are good for--people ask questions, though not too often. In 2014, someone asked Geoffrey Baer, the font of all things Chicago, about it. He too found the account in the December 7, 1879, edition of the Chicago Tribune and focused on its lament over the missing lunch. Ask Geoffrey: 7/9 | Chicago News | WTTW 

But for me, the monument taught me something new about Grant. I'd kept wondering, why a tree, especially when it became clear that he planted quite a few trees, even one that still lives in Japan. The hard-driving military tactician who drank too much and smoked too many cigars. Why would even his in-laws think he wanted to plant a tree?

I’ve read Grant's stirring well-written memoir. I knew his reputation in the Civil War and in his administration--though obviously not enough. And I knew that he’d launched crushing colonization of indigenous lands through things like the Homestead Act and military action in the West. That's why the survival of his statue in Lincoln Park is a focus of the monuments commission. 

But what I hadn’t known until I tried to find out about this missing tree was his faith in the power and beauty of trees to be the lungs of the earth and an inspiration. He’d created Yellowstone as the world's first national park. He helped launch the unofficial holiday of Arbor Day, which encourages everyone to plant trees. He created legislation to encourage the homesteaders on the plains to plant windbreaks of trees to conserve the land. In ceremony after ceremony, he planted trees around the country and even overseas as a symbol of hope that the young tree would outlast short human lives. 

I learned about this unexpected aspect here, on the website of the cabin where he spent his last years, which explains so much. Firmly Planted — U.S. Grant Cottage National Historic Landmark

I'm glad to learn all that about Grant from his cryptic boulder, but sad to learn that in Washington, D.C., they planted a Bur Oak. If Grant had planted a Bur Oak in Washington Park, a tree that evolved to thrive in our bad soil, it would almost certainly be there by its boulder today. 

 (Tree elevation looking south - Grant Memorial Bur Oak , Union Square, Southeast of Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, Washington, District of Columbia, DC | Library of Congress (loc.gov)j)