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Marquette Park - Miller's little jewel on
the lake.
Marquette Park, originally named "Lake
Front Park", has a storied past. Long before there was a park at this location it
was not only the site of the mouth of the Grand Calumet river, but contained a town laid
out first by Joseph Bailly, an early settler in the region. Indiana City remained
on the maps for many years, but never had more than a few shacks on it. The land, a swampy
wetland, had to be drained by local contractor Gus Strom after it was given to the City of
Gary by United States Steel in 1919 for a park. It was a focal point in the controversy
surrounding the annexation of Miller by Gary the year before.
A
close-up map of the park region on
the Chanute Pages shows the original course of the river to the mouth of the Grand
Calumet. For years people have believed that the mouth of the river, permanently closed in
by US Steel when it built the Gary Works in 1906, was at the west side of the park, but
testimony of two 'old timers', Bill Carr and Myron Esmiel, who died at the age of 96 in
the late 1970's, puts the mouth at the east side, approximately where Montgomery Street is
now. Like the Chicago river mouth, it was a low swampy area which in the dry season would
often see lake water flowing into the river rather than out into the lake.
From 1919 until 1932 the park was known Lake Front Park, and the pavilion as Lake Front
Park Pavilion. In 1931 W. P. Gleason, the Superintendent of the Gary Steel Works and
Superintendent of the Gary Park Department, commissioned Henry Hering of New York create a
bronze statue of Father Pere Marquette to be placed at the gateway to the park, which was
renamed Marquette Park with the dedication of the statue in July of 1932.
For more about Henry Hering
and the B-25 collision with the Empire State Building in 1945, see
below.
Views of the park from the
air:
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| Park Entrance |
South - Grand Blvd. |
Pavilion and lagoon |
Marquette Park has been an active place lately.
Volunteers raised money and sweat to put in a new
playground just east of the
bath house, and the bath house has been the site of restoration and renewal
over the past few years. In the works for the year 2000 is more work on the
bath house and a major overhaul of the roadwork and parking along with,
hopefully, some work on the lagoon and the
tennis courts.
There is more too, on the Playground
page and the Aquatorium page, along
with some great pictures. Enjoy.
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Marquette Park Pavilion
Erected in 1923-24 on a lagoon in the Grand Calumet River at a
cost of $350,000, the building was designed by George W. Maher.
Renovated in 1966, and with recent renovations and painting, the building is still a
popular site for all sorts of events, from wedding to civic functions. |
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Contact the Pavilion office at 219-938-7363 for more information and bookings.
Or email lbrooks@ci.gary.in.us
Henry Hering (1874-1949) was a renown American
sculptor.
A search of the Smithsonian
Institution's inventory of American Art (a very cool website,
BTW) turns up 39 Hering sculptures, among them the Pro Patria
in Indianapolis and a number of works at Yale University. The
Henry Hering Award is a major award of the National Sculpture
Society.
Hering was a student of the sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the
Cornish
Art Colony in New Hampshire. It was there he met his wife, Elsie
Ward, a fellow sculptor. |
 So
what does the Empire State Building have to do with the Father Marquette
Statue in the Park?
On July 28, 1945 a B-25 smashed into the north side of the building
in a dense fog. It hit the 79th floor, plowing into the studio-apartment
of Henry Hering, who was up in Scarsdale playing golf.
(I guess I'd better add that the base of the statue
and the building are both constructed of Indiana Limestone...that would
be another connection!) |
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