Heffron Memorial Fountain by Lorado Taft’s Midway Studios

Nationally-acclaimed Chicago sculptor and writer Lorado Taft (1860-1936) not only left his own legacy but successfully educated and mentored students at his famous Midway Studios. Born in Elmwood, Illinois, Lorado Taft was a graduate of the University of Illinois and studied at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He settled in Chicago in 1886, becoming an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, and later at the University of Chicago and at his Alma Mater. Taft’s celebrated works include the towering Chief Black Hawk, who overlooks the Rock River near Oregon, IL (1909-10); the Gold Medal winning The Solitude of the Soul at the Art Institute of Chicago (1904), the Fountain of the Great Lakes just outside the Art Institute (1914); and the Fountain of Time at the west end of Chicago’s Midway Plaisance (1922). As a writer, Taft published the groundbreaking The History of American Sculpture in 1903, considered the first analysis of the subject.

Education was extremely important to Taft, who assisted young artists through his Midway Studios in Chicago. He particularly offered opportunities for women students. For over 40 years, he and his studio of apprentices and assistants produced award winning sculpture.

A piece executed at the Midway Studios is the Heffron Memorial Fountain, located in Chicago’s south side Beverly-Morgan Park neighborhood. The Heffron Memorial Fountain was designed by one of Lorado Taft’s promising pupils, Canadian-born Kathleen Beverley Robinson Ingles (1882-1958). Robinson Ingles’ design, executed in Bedford limestone, features a kneeling child with a squirrel on her lap set upon a base. Rising behind the figures are stylized decorative leaves above a frame of stepped arches. A drinking fountain spout and a basin are below. Initially the fountain was set in the courtyard of Bethany Union Church, but was later relocated to its current and publicly viewable site along Wood Street just north of 103rd Street.

The Floriculture Department of the Ridge Woman’s Club commissioned the fountain in memory of local resident Helen Griswold Heffron in 1914. Nellie Heffron (1862-1913) was the well-respected founder and chairman of the club’s Floriculture Department. The department is considered the first of its kind in the U.S., whose purpose was to stimulate and direct interest in local flora and landscape gardening. The Ridge Woman’s Club dedicated the fountain on August 6, 1915 during the club’s Annual Flower Show, whose proceeds were used to fund the fountain’s creation.

While in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, Lorado Taft’s Lincoln, can be viewed by appointment at the John H. Vanderpoel Art Association Gallery at Ridge Park, (773) 779-0007. The maquette, created for a larger and rather famous cast bronze sculpture in Carle Park in downstate Urbana, is approximately eight-feet tall. It is a full standing body length of Abraham Lincoln. Upon the Urbana sculpture’s dedication on July 3, 1927, Lorado Taft revealed that he sought a model of Lincoln “not as Lincoln president and man of sorrow, but Lincoln the young lawyer.” The Vanderpoel Art Association received Lincoln in 1927.