The Marquette Building
140 South Dearborn
Chicago
These four bronze plaques sit above the entry doors of the Marquette Building in Chicago. They were done in 1895 by Henry MacNeil (1866-1947). At the time MacNeil shared a studio in the building with painter Charles F. Browne.
Louis Jolliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, were the first non-Natives to explore and map the Mississippi River in 1673. The four bronze plaques are the story of their journey. They depict the launching of the canoes, the meeting of the Michigamea Indians, the arriving at the Chicago River and finally the interring of Marquette’s body.
MacNeil, born in Massachusetts, studied at the Normal Art School in Boston. He was an instructor in industrial art and modeling at Cornell before heading to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
MacNeil returned to Chicago and began assisting on the sculptures for the Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893, also known as the White City or the Worlds Fair. He later settled in Chicago and taught at the Art Institute.
After attending one of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows at the Worlds Fair he began depicting the American Indian throughout his art.
He latter befriended Black Pipe, a Sioux warrior from the show, who he found down-and-out on the Chicago streets after the carnival midways of the Fair had closed. Black Pipe, at the invitation of MacNeil, assisted in his studio for the next year. Inspired by these native subjects MacNeil, along with writer Hamlin Garland and painter C.F. Browne traveled to the four-corners territories (now, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah) seeing American Indians (Navajo, and Moqui — now Hopi) and studied the changing cultural element on these various reservations.
Perhaps his best known work is as the designer of the Standing Liberty quarter, which was minted from 1916 to 1930, and carries his initial to the right of the date.
He also sculpted Justice, the Guardian of Liberty, on the east pediment of the United States Supreme Court building.
One of his last works was the Pony Express statue dedicated in 1940 in St. Joseph, Missouri.
