Stearns Square
Stearns Square is an urban, city square located in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, in the heart of Metro Center's Club Quarter. It was designed by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the landscape architect Stanford White, to accompany Saint-Gaudens' statue, The Puritan.
01History
Augustus Saint Gaudens' The Puritan and Stanford White's planned landscape environment were meant to aid in the transformation of northern Metro Center Springfield from a neighborhood of immigrant housing into a grandiose district, with a state-of-the-art railroad station, (the grand Union Station,) a famous theater, (The Paramount;) and luxury hotels such as the Hotel Kimball. The park and the statue were unveiled on Thanksgiving, 1887. Then, however, as now, the area was Springfield's bawdy Club Quarter, and thus by December 1888, the landscaped environment and the viewing enclave's intent had been destroyed. By 1899 the Deacon Chapin figure had been moved into Merrick Park located just outside the Quadrangle. The other accouterments created for Stearns Square were placed in storage. Unfortunately, no trace remained of the architect and sculptor's landscaped arena and their socializing intent.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Stearns Square”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Stearns Square, Springfield MA.jpg by John Phelan, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Sketch of Saint Gaudens's Statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, Springfield, Massachusetts MET DP169968.jpg by Stanford White, CC0
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