Archive for Chicago Downtown
Christmas Eve 1895.
Chicago, Illinois
There was a Wedding in …
Hermon MacNeil’s Studio
~ 1733 Marquette Building ~

Married in a private ceremony on Christmas Day Hermon and Carol MacNeil had a reception in the Marquette Building
~
Every Christmas we remember this
Special Christmas Day Wedding of two sculptors.
They met in Chicago, Carol’s hometown as they sculpted the “White City” of The Worlds Columbian Exposition (aka. Chicago Worlds Fair). That event opened in May 1893.
Hermon made figures on the Electricity Building. Carol (Carrie) was a student of Lorado Taft and became a “White Rabbit”, that group of select females permitted to sculpt as the deadline for opening day loomed closer.
Two years later Hermon, age 29, proposed to Carol (Carrie) just 24. She accepted. They got a Marriage License on Christmas Eve and used it the next day. Several weeks later they sailed to Rome where Hermon had accepted the Reinhart Fellowship and they both continued to learn sculpture for 3 years. And then spent a a fourth year in Paris.
~ Christmas Day 1895 ~
Merry Christmas – 124th Anniversary of Hermon and Carrie Brooks MacNeil’s Wedding Day.
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By The original uploader was TonyTheTiger at English Wikipedia.(Original text: en:User:TonyTheTiger) – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3588095
They had a wedding reception in the Marquette Building in the Studio of Hermon Atkins MacNeil.
The Brooks of Winnetka, Illinois hosted the reception for Carol (“Carrie” to her friends) and the “happiest man in the world” – her new husband – “Hermon Atkins MacNeil”.
Carrie’s father and mother, Alden F. and Ellen T. (nee, Woodworth) Brooks lived at 518 Elder Lane, Winnetka. He was a portrait painter for whom President William McKinley once sat. Hermon would later sculpt the memorial statue of William McKinley at the Columbus, Ohio Capitol Building. McKinley was assassinated in 1901 at the Buffalo Worlds Fair.
Carrie preferred sculpture to painting, though she grew up in her parents home with a great awareness and appreciation of the arts and Chicago community, and the Chicago Art Institute.

A 2019 photo of the home where Carrie Brooks parents lived when he died at 93 years of age in 1932. The home still stands at 436 Elder Lane and Woodlawn avenue, in the north shore Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Illinois. The neighborhood appears very original and well maintained even today. They lived elsewhere in Hyde Park when they hosted the wedding reception for Carrie and Hermon 124 years ago.
Happy Christmas Memories
Merry Christmas
and
Happy Anniversary
( X 124) to the MacNeil Sculptor Couple
our favorite Christmas Coupe Today!
Invitation below…
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Marquette Building Being Restored – MacNeil’s Four Bronze Panels under scaffolding
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Here are my two favorite young Chicagoans coming back from a theater performance of “Hamilton”. They stopped and posed below the second panel.
In 2019 the Marquette Building construction has the four bas relief panels (above the doors) protected under scaffolding while the edifice is under repair. >—–>>
Hermon MacNeil’s first studio home was in the Marquette Building of Chicago in 1895. His wedding reception for him and Carol Brooks was hosted there on Christmas Day eve 1895.
From that same location, his Four Bronze Panels over the front doors have been telling the story of Father Marquette for 124 years. They welcome visitors into the Marquette Building, just as the Native Americans met and welcomed the European explorers to Northwest Territory. The Native Americans who lived in these regions include the Ojibwa, Huron, Ottowa, Illini, Potawatomi, and Menominee. MacNeil placed these tribes on the Marquette Memorial Statue on Douglas Avenue in 1926.

MacNeil carved the tribal names in the Marquette Memorial of 1926. His moccasins are exquisite in detail, looking life-like.
[(These Panels were refurbished to their original bronze luster in 2009.) CLICK HERE]
“Over the doors of the main entrance are panels of bronze, designed and executed by Mr. Herman A. MacNeil, illustrating incidents in the life of Pere Marquette
in his explorations of the Mississippi River and the state of Illinois…The inscriptions below are panels taken from Marquette’s diary.”
Architectural Reviewer, July 1897
Before the remodeling the panels look like this. MacNeil’s bronze panels of 1895.
MacArthur Foundation began restorations in 2001.

Marquette Building at 140 S. Dearborn Ave in Chicago with four MacNeil bronze sculptures above the entry doors
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation began ongoing restoration phases after acquiring the structure in 2001.
These phases include the following:
In 2001, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, its current owners, began a multi-year renovation.[18] The restoration to the exterior proceeded in two phases: reconstructing the cornice and replacing the 17th story windows to match the original windows; and cleaning and restoring the masonry and restoring the remainder of the windows.[8][19] Restoration architect Thomas “Gunny” Harboe directed this work.
The Foundation has invested in multiple restorations.
The Marquette and Joliette faces of MacNeil’s 1899 bronze reliefs at the Marquette building in the Loop resemble those likenesses he placed in his larger statue grouping on Douglas Avenue in 1926.
The Foundation website describes the History of the Panels as follows: “Herman (sic: Hermon) MacNeil was a trained sculptor who worked on sculptures for the 1893 World’s Fair. After commissioning MacNeil for the exterior bronzes, Aldis wrote to Peter Brooks, “McNeil’s [sic] panels are being placed in position. It is greatly to their and his credit that these bas-reliefs have won for him the Roman [Reinhart] Fellowship. The Commission, choosing him as the best of the very young men…The young sculptor was married on Christmas Day, and sailed for Rome on Wednesday, and is, on the whole, the most happy young man I know. He is very grateful to the owners of the Marquette Building.” CLICK HERE

MacNeil modeled Black Pipe after meeting him in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at the Chicago Worlds Fair.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipMoXrdAoOT7PRD-QcwjCC96VrRg_aDC7F7aay66=s1600-w1600
MacNeil-Brooks Wedding Reception – Christmas Day 1895
Posted by: | CommentsOne Hundred and twenty-three years (123) ago, Hermon Atkins MacNeil and Carol Louise Brooks were on married Christmas Day.
Recently an invitation to their Wedding Reception came available from the estate of Walter Pratt. He was a first cousin of Hermon. A facsimile appears below.

Noteworthy, is the location of the reception: the “Studio 1733 Marquette Building Chicago, Adams and Dearborn Streets, Chicago”. Recovery of this printed invitation adds several previously unknown facts to the story of their wedding day. The 19th Century Marquette Building is the 21st Century home of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The wedding earlier in the day was a private ceremony. Rev. Edward F. Williams, a Congregational Minister, officiated. Their license, completed in Rev. Williams hand, appears below.

“Marriage: On Christmas Day 1895, in Chicago, he married Carol Louise Brooks, also a sculptor (see their marriage record below). Earlier MacNeil was informed that he had won the Rinehart Roman Scholarship. Following their wedding, the pair left for Rome, passing three years there (1896-1899) and eventually spend a fourth year in Paris where their first son, Claude, was born. During those years they studied together under the same masters and shared the income of the Rinehart scholarship awarded to Hermon. (Carol had also studied sculpture with both Lorado Taft and Frederick William MacMonnies).”
Both Carol and Hermon sculpted for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Carol Brooks was one of Lorado Taft’s “White Rabbits”
Lorado Taft’s “White Rabbits” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rabbits_(sculptors)
Hermon sculpted statues on the Electricity Building (See picture below)

Carol Brooks MacNeil – 1907 – Twelve years after her marriage to Hermon H.A.MacNeil ~1895 sketch – The Sun (New York City) The Electricity Building housed the Tower of Light, displays by Western Electric, General Electric, American Bell Telephone, Edison’s lasest phonographs. The White City Columbian Exposition: http://members.cox.net/academia/cassatt8.html New York Public Library – Digital Gallery (655 x 760) H.A. MacNeil “Fan Club” Members examine the Marquette Building – 140 S. Dearborn Ave. Panel 4 “The de Profundus was intoned Panel 3 “Passing two leagues up the river …” Panel 2 ” To follow those waters …” “To follow those …” Panel 1

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Searching for Uncle Hermon in Chicago ~ “The Sun Vow” (cont.)
Posted by: | CommentsOn a cold December day we took the CTA Blue Line to Jackson street and walked out of the underground on Dearborn Street at the Federal Court Building. We were just a block south of the Marquette Building which is home to Hermon MacNeil’s 1895 sculptures of 4 bronze relief panels [Cick Here] that tell the story Father Marquette explorations to Native peoples of Illinois.
We walked past the Federal Courts, then turned east toward the Art Institute of Chicago.
There sculptor Edward Kemeys’ twin bronze Lions (Mr. Defiance and Mr. Prowl) greeted us at the entrance in their Holiday regalia. They have stood guard there since 1893 when Mrs. Henry Field commissioned them.
Above is “Mister ‘In-an-Attitude-of-Defiance’,” as he rests on a Christmas package that normally is his base. The mood was festive as sixty people smiled and waited on the steps (between Mr. Prowler and Mr. Defiance) until the Museum doors were opened at 10 am.
1) Prowler and Defiance, 2)Mrs. Henry Field, and 3) Hermon MacNeil are all contemporaries of the 1893-95 era of the Chicago World’s Fair (Worlds Columbian Exposition).
Once inside we spent the morning admiring early art of Dutch and French collections. Eventually, we came opon a fovorite, Jules Adolphe Breton’s The Song of the Lark, (1884).

Part of the Field Collection, French artist, Jules Adolphe Breton’s The Song of the Lark, 1884. is admired by a happy visitor.
After some lunch in the modern art area, we went to find MacNeil’s “Sun Vow”. Here are my results.
While I could go on-and-on about this most famous of Uncle Hermon’s works, I will let my photographs speak for themselves. Enjoy!