Grant Park Rostral Columns - Chicago, IL - Freestanding Columns on Waymarking.com

These rostral columns at least originally were one of several sets designed to ornament Grant Park, although I haven't found the others yet. This pair stands on the western side of the Van Buren Avenue pedestrian bridge over the Illinois Central Railroad tracks.

Here is an excerpt about the columns and how they fit into the park's design from the book "Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America"

Finally in 1915, the park commissioners hired Bennett to create new plans to complete Grant Park. His firm, Bennet, Parsons, Frost & Thomas, produced a 1922 comprehensive park plan as well as construction documents for various areas and specific details. Grant Park's landscape was largely completed in time for the Century of Progress, Chicago's second world's fair, which opened in 1933 on new landfill acreage just south of Grant Park.

Bennett's plan paid homage to Burnham's vision while also providing unobstructed lakefront views. Bennett combined a classical idiom with elements reflecting modernistic trends. Relying on a configuration derived from French Beaux-Arts schemes, he divided the park into a series of symmetrically arranged parterres and outdoor room-like spaces defined by formal allies of trees; lawn panels with trimmed hedges; symmetrical walkways and terraces; as well as classical fountains, balustrades, large ornate pylons, and a peristyle. Art Deco details are subtly woven into this classical vocabulary, for instance in the detailing of the ornamental concrete rostral columns. The fluted shafts of these columns are surmounted by round globe lights encased by bronze grilles with sculptural bas-reliefs representing the signs of the zodiac.

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Documentation (website): [Web Link] Type of Column: Doric Location: Van Buren and Michigan Avenue, near the pedestrian bridge.

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