Sun Yat-Sen Portrait Bust and Fountain


Sun Yat-Sen Portrait Bust and Fountain, 1976
Unknown artist
Sun Yat-Sen Park
251 West 24th Place

This Chinese revolutionary, first president and founding father of the Republic of China, is honored in this one-third-acre park in Chinatown. Before being elected president in 1911, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (1866–1925) visited Chicago on three occasions as well as numerous other U.S. cities seeking support and funds to help overthrow the Qing Dynasty.
For decades, the Chinatown neighborhood lacked open spaces. Thus, when the city acquired a strip of land adjacent to the Stevenson Expressway in the 1970s, the Bureau of Architecture created a plan for a park. This bronze bust of Sun Yat-Sen sits atop a marble pedestal inscribed with quotations by Confucius in Chinese and English translations by G.H. Wang, a long-time leader in Chinatown. In 2000, the monument’s rectangular pool was fully restored by the Public Building Commission as part of a citywide fountains initiative.

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