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Two revered symbols stand proudly at Congress Street and Michigan Avenue, one block from Buckingham Fountain at the western entrance to Grant Park. They are the Bowman and the Spearman, chosen by Yugoslav sculptor Ivan Mestrovic to be the subject of statues commissioned by the Committee of the Ferguson Fund in 1926. The statues were cast in Zagreb and shipped to Chicago for unveiling in 1929.

Highlights of Chicago History

In 1673, on their return trip from Mackinac Island to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River, a party of seven men including French Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette and Canadian explorer Louis Joliet, a mapmaker, set foot on land which would eventually become Chicago. This was the first recorded time that non-Native Americans laid eyes on the site of the future Chicago. Native American tribes who inhabited the territory included Miami, Iroquois and Potawatomi.

In 1696, Jesuit Father Francois Pinet founded the Mission of the Guardian Angel. It was destroyed in a massacre August 16, 1812. In the 1770's Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable established a trading post on the north bank of the Chicago River near the Lake. Named after the Secretary of War, Fort Dearborn was established at the mouth of the Chicago River in 1803. For an estimated eighty years, hostile relations between settlers and Native Americans blocked transport between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi.

The Great Chicago Fire

In 1871, Chicago had a population of 335,000 inhabitants. The city, with its wooden sidewalks and timber buildings, was in the midst of a drought during the month of October. Almost no rain had fallen in three months. October 8th was a warm, lovely, breezy Sunday. Soon after 9pm, property on DeKoven Street (now the site of the Chicago Fire Academy) caught fire and spread to nearby buildings. Before midnight, the fire had jumped the southeast branch of the Chicago River and was spreading to the northeast where it traveled as far as Fullerton Avenue. The fire raged for two days and by late afternoon Oct. 9th, with the help of rain, it burned itself out sparing only the water tower on Michigan Avenue on the west side of the street which this year is being converted into a theater. As a result of the catastrophe, 90,000 Chicagoans were homeless, 300 died and $200,000,000 worth of property lay in ashes.

The disaster of The Great Chicago Fire was the worst thing that could happen to the residents of Chicago but, ironically, gave Chicagoans the opportunity to rebuild and begin the tradition of being one of the most architecturally distinguished cities in the world, a tradition savored and valued to this day.