Franklin Square (Bloomington, Illinois) Informations

Franklin Square, or Franklin Park is located in Bloomington, Illinois, McLean County. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Franklin Square contains the homes of former Vice President Adlai Stevenson I and former Governor Joseph W. Fifer. In 1979 the square was designated as a local historic district.Located northeast of downtown Bloomington, the square encompasses the 300 and 400 blocks of E. Chestnut and E. Walnut streets and the 900 block of N. Prairie and N. McLean streets.

On April 26, 1856, David Davis, William F. Flagg, and William H. Allin donated a 590-by-330-foot parcel of land to the city of Bloomington, asking that the park be “...used as a place of public resort, pastime and recreation, for citizens and strangers forever.” The original agreement called for the city to improve and ornament the park, and prohibited the city from erecting any buildings on the square.

In 1869, a monument was erected in the center of Franklin Square to commemorate the 700 McLean County citizens who died in the Civil War. Commissioned to Haldeman Marble Works of Bloomington, Illinois, for $15,000, the monument stood 49 feet high with a Lemont limestone base. An inscription read, “McLean County’s Honored Sons: Fallen—but not Forgotten” with engravings of the names of the 700 soldiers that died in service. The structure featured four statues of soldiers (Infantry, Cavalry, Zouave, and Marine) and a life-size figure of a colonel atop an 18-foot shaft.

Over the next few years, the monument began to disintegrate. A committee organized to resolve the situation stated, “Unfortunately, the material of which the monument was constructed has proved to be so perishable that the names of the county’s heroes have been nearly obliterated and the entire monument is in danger of falling.” Former Governor Joseph Fifer lobbied for the city to tear down the monument and build a new one in Miller Park in Bloomington. The lower half of the monument was saved and is currently located in the Bloomington neighborhood of Briarwood.

The houses of Franklin Square were built in a variety of architectural styles from the mid 19th century through the early 20th century, including Georgian Revival, Italianate, Colonial, Queen Anne, and Romanesque Revival. Because the square was home to many prominent citizens of Bloomington, the neighborhood received visits from notable figures, among them Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Clarence Darrow, and Carl Sandburg. Today many Illinois Wesleyan University students reside in the square's houses, including the Alpha Lamba chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and the Sigma Alpha chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota.

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