Jackson Park’s 'Gold Lady' could look like a million again, thanks to a planned restoration

On just the right morning, when things are crisp and clear enough, the sun rises over the lake and lights up the gilded two-story Statue of the Republic in Jackson Park.

And the Gold Lady — as she's informally known — proudly faces that rising sun as she's done since 1918, draped in a tunic, crowned with a laurel and with her arms aloft. She holds an eagle-topped globe in her right hand and a staff bearing the word “Liberty” in her left.

But the spectacle, though still impressive, has been losing its luster in recent years. The gold leaf is growing dull and some of it has flaked away enough to expose the bronze underneath.

The work still shines, but not like it once did.

The Chicago Park District is now making plans to repair and regild the Gold Lady starting in May. The $1 million job includes repairing and removing the 24-foot statue's worn and flaking gold leaf and applying a new layer of the micro-thin substance over the entire work.

"It's beautiful now ... but once the gilding is on, I think people will be stunned by the transformation," Chicago Park District Director of Historic Assets Andrew Schneider said.

So here's to The Republic, for which it stands — right there at 63rd Street and Hayes Drive traffic circle. The statue was last regilded 33 years ago, so it's about time.

And it's good to see one of Jackson Park's jewels — one that lies beyond the grounds of Obamaland on the north end of the park — get some long-needed attention.

‘Our Statue of Liberty’

Designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French, the sculpture is a scaled-down replica of the 65-foot gilded Statue of the Republic that sat in a basin facing west toward the neo-classical Court of Honor and its high-domed Administration Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, held in Jackson Park.

"The 1893 World's Fair was one of the great fairs of the world," Chicago author and historian Rolf Achilles said.

"It not only brought tens of thousands of people to Chicago, but it really helped put Chicago on the map and brought people to see the new architecture in Chicago," Achilles said.

The statue was designed to celebrate the American ideals of liberty and its republic form of governance.

"That was the whole concept," Achilles said. "The sun was hitting America, and America was aglow at the time. Even if it was a white man's concept, it was still a concept and it worked, in part. And that made her a centerpiece of what people went to the fair and took home with them as visual."

But the first Gold Lady and all the fair buildings — with the exception of the Palace of Fine Arts, which later became the Museum of Science and Industry — were temporary plaster structures that were wrecked and removed after the exposition.

Park officials got rid of the Gold Lady by burning her down.

A quarter century after the fair and five years before creating the Sitting Lincoln sculpture at Washington, D.C.,'s Lincoln Memorial, French returned to Jackson Park to create the current Statue of the Republic.

The new statue would commemorate the exposition's 25th anniversary and the century that had passed since Illinois won statehood.

The sculpture was placed on the old site of the fair's Administration Building and faces east. Architect Henry Bacon, who oversaw the design and engineering of the Lincoln Memorial, created the 10-foot base.

"It strikes me as our own Statue of Liberty," Hyde Park resident and parks advocate Bronwyn Nichols Lodato said. "The regilding allows for there to be a reassessment of what that statue means and what that history means for the South Side ... and to rethink our place in the world ... what it means to be an American ... in the midst of all that's happening."

A ‘great treasure’

Workers will remove all of the existing gold leaf then laser clean and repair the entire sculpture. Then they'll put on an epoxy primer, a base layer, a polymer base — both gold-colored — and an adhesive.

Next comes the 2 millimeter thick gold leaf, somewhere between 12,000 to 15,000 pieces, that will be applied by hand, almost like laying on the fixings of a submarine sandwich.

The Art Institute of Chicago's 121-year-old B.F. Ferguson Monument Fund is kicking in $140,000 toward purchasing the gold leaf, a spokesperson for the museum said.

The job could take two to three months to complete. The statue will be encapsulated during the work.

Schneider said the Park District is looking to restore the Gold Lady's base in the next phase of work — bringing the total price to at least $2.3 million, he said. The agency is also considering adding lighting to the statue at some point.

And here's hoping they rethink the traffic circle plaza on which the statue sits, which has no seating where parks patrons can rest and enjoy the work.

The restoration comes three months after the agency announced plans to restore a historic open air pavilion at the southern end of the park.

Schneider said the district is looking at the park's other neglected features, such as the Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge, located just south of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, that has been closed to pedestrians for safety reason by the Chicago Department of Transportation since 2013.

"Jackson Park is one of the great, one of the great treasures of our city, and it contains within it many great treasures," Schneider said. "So we're pleased to show this commitment to the people of the city Chicago."