The Carl Linnaeus Sculpture in the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Illinois.

The figure of Carl (Carolus) Linnaeus [1] (1701-1778) looms large in the history of science and is appropriately placed in the 'Heritage Garden' at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Illinois.

Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, formalized the modern system of naming organisms (plants and animals) called binomial nomenclature which is still in use today. He is known by the epithet "father of modern taxonomy."

Carl Linnaeus - aka: Carl von Linné

He is shown reaching eagerly toward the plants in his path with a collector’s enthusiasm. The prominent bird in the sculpture — a golden plover, which can fly for thousands of miles — refers to the many students of Linnaeus who traveled the globe collecting plants for him to name.

This plaque was been updated to include: "Linnaeus also applied this system to humans, without any scientific basis. He categorized humans based on race and assigned negative behavioral traits to Africans and other nonwhites. This system has been used to promote slavery and other racial injustices throughout history."

A brief history of the Chicago Botanic Garden

The Chicago Botanic Garden traces its origins back to the Chicago Horticultural Society, founded in 1890. Using the motto "Urbs in Horto," meaning "city in a garden," the Society hosted nationally recognized flower and horticultural shows; its third was the World's Columbian Exposition Chrysanthemum Show, held in October of 1893 in conjunction with Chicago's World's Fair. 

After a period of inactivity, the Chicago Horticultural Society was restarted in 1943. In 1962, its modern history began when the Society agreed to help create and manage a new public garden. With the groundbreaking for the Chicago Botanic Garden in 1965 and its opening in 1972, the Society created a permanent site on which to carry out its mission. The Garden today is an example of a successful public-private partnership. It is owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, located in Glencoe and operated by the Chicago Horticultural Society.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

[1] Carl Linnaeus also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus (after 1761 Carolus a Linné).

The History of the Heald Square Monument at Wacker Drive and Wabash Avenue in Chicago, Illinois.

Chicago's Heald Square is named for Nathan Heald, an officer in the United States Army during the War of 1812 who was in charge of Fort Dearborn during the Fort Dearborn Massacre on August 15, 1812. Heald Square became part of the Chicago Park District in 1934, but the ownership was transferred to the City of Chicago in 1959.

Lorado Taft's, Heald Square Monument is an 11-foot high bronze image of three Revolutionary War heroes standing on a six-foot-high granite base on Lower Wacker Drive, between Wabash and State Street, on the south side of the Chicago River.

George Washington is the central figure and is flanked by Haym Salomon on his left and Robert Morris on his right.

Robert Morris was a very wealthy and prominent businessman in Philadelphia. In 1776, he loaned $10,000 of his own money to the government when the Continental Army lacked the funds to continue fighting the war. He devised a plan for a National bank and submitted it to Congress in 1781. Morris was one of only two patriots to sign all three of the important founding documents of the United States: The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, and The United States Constitution.

Haym Salomon was born in Leszno, Poland, in 1740. His parents had been driven out of what is now Portugal by anti-Semitic laws decreed by the monarchy. When Salomon was a young man, he fled to Holland during a period of mob violence against Jews. Salomon immigrated to New York City in 1775 and became a financial broker. He sympathized with the anti-British forces and joined the Sons of Liberty. Salomon opened an office as a dealer of bills of exchange, bonds sold to provide funds for the Revolutionary War effort, and arranged for a loan to help George Washington pay his soldiers. Salomon and Morris collaborated to become effective brokers of bills of exchange to meet federal government expenses. Unfortunately, Salomon died penniless shortly after the Revolutionary War, having donated everything he owned to the war effort.

The scourge of anti-Semitism invaded the United States after the Civil War and reached its peak in the 1930s when more than one hundred anti-Jewish groups were organized. Barnet Hodes, a Chicago attorney and head of the Chicago Department of Law, led an attempt to curb the rise of Anti-Semitism in Chicago when he created the Patriotic Foundation of Chicago on July 4, 1936. Hodes defined the purpose of the foundation: "...the erection in Chicago of an appropriate memorial symbolizing the cooperation that George Washington received from Haym Salomon and Robert Morris.”

Hodes, of Polish Jewish heritage, had read about the financial contributions that Jewish patriot Haym Salomon had made to the American Revolution and planned to honor him. However, Hodes felt that a commemorative statue of Salomon standing alone would not deliver the message of intercultural cooperation as effectively as a sculpture with non-Jewish patriots like George Washington and Robert Morris.

Barnet Hodes chose Lorado Taft to design the Heald Square Monument, and a campaign to raise $50,000 to complete the project was launched. Taft completed a small study model of the monument that depicted Robert Morris and Haym Salomon standing hand-in-hand with George Washington. Taft, unfortunately, died in 1936, but his work was completed by three of his students, Leonard Crunelle, Nellie Walker, and Mary Webster.

The inscription on the base of the sculpture is a quote from George Washington who based his comments on part of a letter written in 1790 by Moses Seixas, a member of a Newport, Rhode Island, Hebrew congregation. It reads: “The government of the United States which gives to bigotry no sanction to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it in all occasions their effectual support.”

Taft designed this bronze plaque with a seated Statue of Liberty stretching out her arms to welcome all people no matter their race and beliefs. It is on the back of the base of the monument.

The Heald Square Monument was dedicated on December 15, 1941. The date was chosen to coincide with Bill of Rights Day, a nationwide celebration of the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. The fact that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan on December 7, 1941, added additional significance to the dedication ceremonies. Barnet Hodes formally presented the Heald Square Monument to the City of Chicago and said: “Robert Morris and Haym Salomon tell us that civilian cooperation and civilian sacrifice with the military and naval forces were no less important in the first days of our Republic than it is today. Joined with indomitable Washington, they will stand here to remind us that America became America we love because there was that working together between civilians and soldiers without which no war can be won. It is the fervent hope of those who made this monument possible that all who see it, today and through the years to come, will catch from it and be constantly inspired by this crucial lesson from the past.”

The Heald Square Monument became the first sculpture designated as a Chicago Landmark by the Chicago City Council on September 15, 1971.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Nicholas Jarrot Mansion, Illinois' Oldest Brick House with complete blueprints, Cahokia, Illinois. (1806)

One of the first historic landmarks to be considered when the Works Progress Administration (WPA) architects began work on the Historic American Buildings Survey in Illinois was the venerable Jarrot Mansion at Cahokia. There were numerous reasons for this, not the least of which is that the Jarrot Mansion is perhaps the oldest brick house in the upper Mississippi Valley. 

After measuring, sketching, and photographing the mansion, the architects drew detailed plans of it under the supervision of their director, Edgar E. Lundgren, for permanent preservation in the Library of Congress and in the architectural libraries of the Chicago Art Institute and the University of Illinois. This mansion was one of several hundred historic landmarks in all parts of the state that were recorded. 

When the building of this residence was begun in 1799, with workmen making all of its bricks on the spot, there was no state of Illinois. Cahokia, a thriving French town of log and frame houses, was then in the Northwest Territory, a territory established by the newly formed American republic. By the time the mansion was completed in 1806, the Illinois country was part of Indiana Territory. Later, when it became a state one of the numerous receptions to the first chief executive, Governor Shadrach Bond, was held in the Jarrot Mansion. A frequent visitor here before that time, and of afterward, was Ninian Edwards, governor of Illinois Territory, and the state's first United States senator. 

What brought these public officials, as well as many other leading citizens of Illinois' territorial days, to the Jarrot Mansion was the personality, influence and status of its master, Nicholas Jarrot. In the years after the mansion was completed, Jarrot reigned in it as a kind of feudal lord of Cahokia. He is said to have owned •twenty-five thousand acres of land, including the present site of East St. Louis. 

A native of Vesoul, France, where he was born in 1764, Nicholas Jarrot came to America in 1790, landing at Baltimore. After visiting New Orleans, he journeyed up the Mississippi River to the French settlements in Illinois. He purchased land at Cahokia in 1793, and four years later married Julia Beauvais (his second wife), daughter of a wealthy resident of Ste. Genevieve, across the Mississippi in Missouri. 

When the Jarrot Mansion was completed, it became the most admired dwelling in the region. Here, six Jarrot children were born and reared. One of them, Vital Jarrot, served in the Black Hawk War, was elected to the General Assembly, became part owner of the first railroad in Illinois, and established the first newspaper in East St. Louis. 

In the ballroom on the second floor of the Jarrot Mansion was held the first school in Cahokia. This was in 1809 when Jarrot persuaded a lawyer from Kentucky, Samuel Davidson, to give up his practice and become a schoolmaster, at a salary of $400 a year. 

Living almost next door to the Church of the Holy Family, the Jarrots were a devout couple and always the led the family procession to mass on Sundays and holy days. They were also a generous and hospitable couple, and balls, receptions, and dinners were frequent in their stately brick mansion. Here Nicholas Jarrot continued to live until his death in 1820. 

During the great Mississippi River flood of 1844, Mme. Jarrot and her family went to and from their home in skiffs, tying the boats to the railing of the stairway in the central reception hall. 

Although Cahokia declined rapidly with the rise of St. Louis and East St. Louis, the widowed Mme. Jarrot remained in her mansion for many years. But she left it finally and died in East St. Louis in 1875 at the age of ninety-five. 

Her daughter, Mrs. James L. Brackett, occupied the historic dwelling until her own death in 1886. Afterward, the house was occupied by nuns of the near-by Church of the Holy Family, a church which grew out of the first mission founded at Cahokia in 1699. 

The mansion is one of the few landmarks left in old Cahokia — which now is but a filling-station hamlet just south of East St. Louis. Despite its great age and the disturbances of earthquakes and floods, the house is in sound condition. On its rear wall can be seen a crack — a memento of the 1811 earthquake. 

It is a two‑story abode of red brick, designed in the Georgian Colonial style which is evident in the white columns of the portico and in the fan-light over the paneled walnut door. 

In many of the windows one can see the original hand-pressed panes imported from France. The gabled roof is covered with modern tiles. The foundation walls, composed of rough stone blocks, are two feet thick. One portion of the dark, stone-paved basement was used as a wine cellar and storage room, and another, containing a large crude fireplace, was evidently the kitchen where the Negroes did the family cooking. 

In recent years a handful of children, among them dark-eyed descendants of early French settlers of Cahokia, were taught here by black-cowled nuns from the Holy Family Church — just as children were taught in the ballroom of this mansion more than a hundred years again. 

The Jarrot Mansion was showing signs of considerable wear and tear when, recently, it was purchased by Oliver Lafayette Parks of East St. Louis who, after restoring it, converted it into a residence and guest house. Parks Air College occupies a large airfield near by.

Appreciating the historic value of his newly-acquired house, Mr. Parks commissioned the St. Louis architectural firm of Study, Farrar & Majers (working in collaboration with another architectural firm, Hoener & Hubbard) to restore it as nearly as possible to its original state. The result of their work is considered a fine example of early American architecture. 

Free PDF books in my Digital Research Library of Illinois History®

• "Old Illinois Houses" by John Drury, published 1948
• The Jarrot Mansion is Illinois' Oldest Brick House. The Original 1806 Blueprints.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.