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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