Benjamin Franklin Ferguson (died 1905) was an American

lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...

merchant and co-founder of the ''Santee River Cypress Lumber Company''. The firm specialized in the harvesting of

old-growth An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without Disturbance (ecology), disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organizati ...

timber from the

blackwater river A blackwater river is a type of River#Classification, river with a slow-moving channel flowing through forested swamps or wetlands. Most major blackwater rivers are in the Amazon Basin and the Southern United States. The term is used in fluvial ...

bottomlands of central

South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...

, in and around the

Santee River } The Santee River is a river in South Carolina in the United States, and is long. The Santee and its tributaries provide the principal drainage for the coastal areas of southeastern South Carolina and navigation for the central coastal plain of ...

watershed. The tracts of land logged by Ferguson, in partnership with fellow logging executive Francis Beidler, included substantial tracts of valuable

bald cypress ''Taxodium distichum'' (baldcypress, bald-cypress, bald cypress, swamp cypress; ; ''cipre'' in Louisiana) is a deciduous conifer in the family Cupressaceae. It is native to the southeastern United States. Hardy and tough, this tree adapts to a w ...

. With profits from the Santee River logging venture, Ferguson became a

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

. His 1905 $1 million ($ million today) charitable trust gift funded seventeen of the most notable public monuments and sculptures in

Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The works include

Lorado Taft Lorado Zadok Taft (April 29, 1860 – October 30, 1936) was an American sculptor, writer and educator. Part of the American Renaissance movement, his monumental pieces include, ''Fountain of Time'', ''Spirit of the Great Lakes'', and ''The ...

's ''

Fountain of Time ''Fountain of Time'', or simply ''Time'', is a sculpture by Lorado Taft, measuring in length, situated at the western edge of the Midway Plaisance within Washington Park in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. The sculpture is inspire ...

'' and ''

Fountain of the Great Lakes ''Fountain of the Great Lakes'', or ''Spirit of the Great Lakes Fountain'', is an allegorical sculpture and fountain by Lorado Taft. The bronze artwork, created between 1907 and 1913, depicts five women arranged so that the fountains waterfall r ...

'',

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental Bronze sculpture, bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore ...

's ''

Nuclear Energy Nuclear energy may refer to: *Nuclear power, the use of sustained nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to generate heat and electricity *Nuclear binding energy, the energy needed to fuse or split a nucleus of an atom *Nuclear potential energy, the pot ...

'' at

Chicago Pile-1 Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the first artificial nuclear reactor. On 2 December 1942, the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1 during an experiment led by Enrico Fermi. The secret development of the react ...

and ''

Man Enters the Cosmos ''Man Enters the Cosmos'' is a cast bronze sculpture by Henry Moore located on the Lake Michigan lakefront outside the Adler Planetarium in the Museum Campus area of downtown Chicago, Illinois. The sculpture is a functional bowstring equator ...

'', and a work by

Isamu Noguchi was an American artist, furniture designer and Landscape architecture, landscape architect whose career spanned six decades from the 1920s. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Grah ...

. Ferguson's gift set out terms whereby the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

was empowered to select subjects and sites for "The erection and maintenance of enduring statuary and monuments, in whole or in part of stone, granite or bronze in the parks, along the boulevards or in other public places." The Art Institute also funded

Carl Milles Carl Milles (; 23 June 1875 – 19 September 1955) was a Swedes, Swedish sculpture, sculptor. He was married to artist Olga Milles (née Granner) and brother to Ruth Milles and half-brother to the architect Evert Milles. Carl Milles sculpted the ...

's ''Fountain of the Tritons'', which sits in its courtyard, with this fund, but by the 1930s began to tire of standard sculpture and sought a court ruling to include buildings within the terms of the agreement. In the 1950s, they used some of the funds to add a wing to the Art Institute of Chicago Building, named the B. F. Ferguson Memorial Building. A relief sculpture of Benjamin Ferguson appears on the back on ''Fountain of the Great Lakes''. The fund also commissioned the recognizable ''The Bowman'' and ''The Spearman'' sculptures by

Ivan Meštrović Ivan Meštrović (; 15 August 1883 – 16 January 1962) was a Croatian and Yugoslav sculptor, architect, and writer. He was the most prominent modern Croatian sculptor and a leading artistic personality in contemporary Zagreb. He studied at Pa ...

on opposite sides of Congress Parkway at Michigan Avenue and in Grant Park. The fund has commissioned the '' Illinois Centennial Memorial Column'' in Logan Square by

Lincoln Memorial The Lincoln Memorial is a List of national memorials of the United States, U.S. national memorial honoring Abraham Lincoln, the List of presidents of the United States, 16th president of the United States, located on the western end of the Nati ...

architect, Henry Bacon, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

' statehood. One of the more recent fundings was

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...

's black granite ''The Waltz of Hands'' Jane Addams Memorial in 1996; however, the management of the fund has come under question in the 21st century. Ferguson lived in the Jackson Boulevard District of the Near West Side community area of Chicago, where he built a red brick Queen Anne house in 1883 that took up three city lots. The

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

of Ferguson, South Carolina, named after Ferguson, contained the mills operated by the lumberman and his partner.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferguson, Benjamin 1905 deaths Philanthropists from Illinois Businesspeople from Chicago Year of birth missing