Eli Bates Fountain, also known as ''Storks at Play'', is a fountain and sculpture in the center of the formal garden outside

Lincoln Park Lincoln Park is a park along Lake Michigan on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. Named after US president Abraham Lincoln, it is the city's largest public park and stretches for from Grand Avenue (500 N), on the south, to near Ardmore Avenu ...

's Conservatory, in

Chicago 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 ...

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 ...

Description

The fountain is composed of a large, circular granite basin, two bronze storks (or, possibly, herons) with outstretched wings and water spewing water from their beaks, three figures that are half-boy and half-fish each holding unwieldy fishes, and bronze reeds and cattails at the center.

History

The fountain was installed in 1887 as a gift from Eli Bates, a wealthy Chicago business man. It was designed by famous artist

Augustus Saint-Gaudens Augustus Saint-Gaudens (; March 1, 1848 – August 3, 1907) was an American sculpture, sculptor of the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin to an Iris ...

(1848–1907), and his assistant Frederick William MacMonnies (1863–1937), who later would design the famous central fountain, the Grand Barge of State, in the

1893 World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The ce ...

."Eli Bates Fountain"
Chicagoparkdistrict.com. Retrieved September 30th, 2015.

References

{{Portal bar, Chicago, Illinois, United States, Visual arts Bronze sculptures in Illinois Fountains in Illinois Outdoor sculptures in Chicago Sculptures of birds in Illinois Sculptures of children in Illinois Sculptures of fish in the United States Sculptures of plants