--- title: "Chicago’s Fountain of Time, Lorado Taft’s 100-figure concrete sculpture, was dedicated 104 years ago today" url: https://badiyaa.com/fountain-of-time-lorado-taft-chicago/ published: 2026-11-15T10:18:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-15T10:18:00+00:00 section: History publisher: Badiyaa --- # Chicago’s Fountain of Time, Lorado Taft’s 100-figure concrete sculpture, was dedicated 104 years ago today Lorado Taft's Fountain of Time in Chicago, with 100 figures parading past Father Time, was dedicated on November 15, 1922. On November 15, 1922, Chicago formally accepted a sculpture that had already been running water for two years. Lorado Taft’s *Fountain of Time*, a wall of 100 concrete figures shuffling past a hooded Father Time, was dedicated at the western end of the Midway Plaisance 104 years ago today. The piece still stands in the southeast corner of Washington Park on the city’s South Side, facing its giant timekeeper across a reflecting pool. By the most precise measurement on record it runs 126 feet 10 inches long, 24 feet high and 23.5 feet deep, and the Chicago Park District long counted it as the most important artwork in its care. ## A poem, a peace treaty and a million-dollar trust Taft borrowed his theme from the English poet Henry Austin Dobson, whose “Paradox of Time” runs: “Time goes, you say? Ah no, Alas, time stays, we go”. In the sculpture, Time is the one standing still, scythe in hand, while humanity streams by in a long ellipse: soldiers, couples, children at play, families, worshippers and poets. The official occasion was diplomatic. The work honors a hundred years of peace between the United States and Britain after the Treaty of Ghent closed the War of 1812 in December 1814. The money came from Benjamin Ferguson, whose 1905 gift of $1 million set up a trust to commemorate moments in American history. Taft had hoped for granite or Georgia marble. By the time his full-size plaster model went up in 1920, held back by his wartime lecturing for the Y.M.C.A. in France, the grand Beaux Arts style had gone out of fashion, and the trustees would pay only for concrete. ## Concrete with Potomac pebbles That cheaper choice turned into an experiment. The figures were cast as a hollow, steel-reinforced shell from a 4,500-piece mold, using about 250 short tons of a mix perfected by John Joseph Earley of Washington, D.C. His secret was crushed pebbles from the Potomac River, which made the surface tougher than limestone, cheaper than marble or bronze, and lightly glittering from the silica. A design director at the Art Institute of Chicago later called it the first finished artwork made from any form of concrete. Critics in the 1920s were less generous. One likened the pale crowd of faces to a set of false teeth grinning down the Midway. Walk around to the west side and you will meet the sculptor himself. Taft modeled his own figure in a smock, head bowed and hands clasped behind him, with an assistant following. His daughters posed for some of the other faces. ## Timeline: a century of patching - **1913:** Taft signs a five-year, $10,000-a-year contract to make a full-size plaster model. - **September 1, 1920:** Water first flows through the finished fountain. - **November 15, 1922:** Formal dedication, with University of Chicago president Harry Pratt Judson giving the address. - **1936 and 1955:** Weather cracks are repaired, followed by a rededication in 1966. - **1999 to 2001:** A $1.6 million restoration fixes cracks and recoats about 10,000 square feet of surface. - **2005:** The reflecting pool holds water again for the first time in more than 50 years. Early crews did real harm with sandblasting and stiff patching materials. By the 1980s the hollow core was so damp that the figures spent each winter under a tarp. Taft worked a few blocks away at his Midway Studios, now a National Historic Landmark. For more Chicago history, see the [real 1876 origin of the Windy City nickname](https://badiyaa.com/chicago-windy-city-nickname-origin/), or the crowd that tried to [push the Bean in Millennium Park](https://badiyaa.com/push-the-bean-chicago-cloud-gate-millennium-park/), the park whose 2004 opening ended *Time*‘s run as the city’s top public artwork. Engineers expected the 1999 to 2001 repairs to last 30 to 50 years. Counting from 2001, that puts the next major restoration due somewhere between 2031 and 2051. ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Fountain of Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_Time) *Image: Johntb17 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*