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Grand Avenue Park (Court of Honor)

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1874–1963. Median strip of the 800 and 900 blocks of W. Wisconsin Ave.
  • (Photograph by Andrew Hope)
  • (Photograph by Andrew Hope)
  • (Photograph by Andrew Hope)
  • (Photograph by Andrew Hope)

The City of Milwaukee created Grand Avenue Park along this stretch of W. Wisconsin Avenue in 1874. In 1885, meatpacking heiress Elizabeth Plankinton donated $20,000 to pay for its first public monument, an Italian casting of Richard Hamilton Park’s bronze statue of George Washington. When the Panic of 1893 forced Senator John Mitchell to renege on his promise to fund a Civil War memorial, art patron and longtime Soldiers’ Aid Society leader Lydia Ely Hewitt raised funds for The Victorious Charge, designed by John Severinus Conway. It was added in 1898 to celebrate Wisconsin’s fiftieth statehood anniversary. In 1900, architect Alfred C. Clas’s sixty-five-foot-tall limestone design, The Midsummer Column, joined the assemblage during Milwaukee’s Midsummer Carnival. Spanish-American War veterans donated A. Koenig’s bronze statue of a soldier, To Those Who Served in the War with Spain, 1898–1902, erected at Grand Avenue Park’s west end in 1932 and moved to its current location in 1963.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Marsha Weisiger et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Milwaukee Central Library
Wisconsin Club (Alexander Mitchell House)
Wisconsin Tower (Mariner Tower)
Milwaukee County Courthouse
Johnston Hall, Marquette University

Citation

Marsha Weisiger et al., "Grand Avenue Park (Court of Honor)", [Milwaukee, Wisconsin], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WI-01-MI49.

Print Source

Buildings of Wisconsin

Buildings of Wisconsin, Marsha Weisiger and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017, 94-94.

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