In his will, the industrialist
John Crerar bequeathed funds for the creation and maintenance of a free public library in Chicago to be called the
John Crerar Library. He also bequeathed $100,000 (roughly equivalent to $ today) to his executors, Norman Williams and Huntington W Jackson, for the erection of a "colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln" at a location of their choosing. Crerar died in 1889, and in 1897 Saint-Gaudens was commissioned to sculpt the statue. In 1901 the Chicago city council approved an act for the construction of the John Crerar Library in Grant Park on a site bounded by
Michigan Avenue, the Illinois Central railroad tracks, Monroe Avenue and
Madison Street (the site of the
Crown Fountain today). The act also allowed the trustees of the money bequeathed by Crerar to construct a statue of Lincoln to place the statue within the grounds of the library. perched on a ladder working on the draping of the statue. A fire at Saint-Gaudens studio in 1904 destroyed all of his drawings and models for the sculpture, however Saint-Gaudens was able to complete design work and begin casting before his death in 1907. Plans to build in Grant Park were opposed by
Aaron Montgomery Ward, who in 1910 won a court battle to prevent the Crerar Library and the
Field Museum of Natural History from being constructed in the park. The library was instead constructed at the northwest corner of
Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue. Subsequent plans for the development Grant Park called for the statue to be located on reclaimed land between Van Buren Street and
Congress Parkway, but delays in the construction of the park led to the statue being stored, first at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (from 1908 to 1913) and then in a building in
Washington Park. and the statue was unveiled on May 31, 1926. The statue's head was used for the
commemorative postage stamp issued on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth in 1909. ==See also==