Standing at the Lindell entrance to Forest Park, the statue of Francis Preston Blair, Jr. memorialized a Missouri politician that is not very well known anymore, but was once so prominent that he is actually one of two Missourians represented in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
Here’s another great writeup about Blair, at a site about all the statues in Forest Park.
He once stood at a dramatically different entrance to Forest Park, by the way. You can see the Hill Mansion from yesterday in the background.
The entrance once featured a different road configuration, and a now lost building known as the Laclede Pavilion.
Built in what I would call a sort of Spanish Revival style, it welcomed visitors after what would have originally been a short train ride from the city.
The City planned a grand Beaux-Arts entrance designed by Tom Barnett to replace it; little was built, but the roads were reconfigured to welcome the colonnade that would have graced the new esplanade.
