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Tucked here and there thruout Antelope park’s pleasant spaces—179
acres—are a number of statues and memorials, results of various impulses
and circumstances. We have mentioned the pillars at the O street
entrance. Roaming southward thru the park you will find others. One of
these objects is the fountain given to the city by the late D. E.
Thompson thirty or so years ago. It was placed in the center of 11th
street a few blocks south of O. As Lincoln’s herd of automobiles grew to
thundering proportions city officials realized that the fountain, very
suitable in the days when ladies nodded to each other across it from
phaetons and victorias moving on either side, must be transplanted.
After a number of accidents, some of them truly tragic, the fountain was
taken to the park. Neptune, on one side, had been permanently crippled
and the water nymph on the other was doubtless aged in spirit.
In 1936 the Lincoln park department sponsored the putting up of a war
memorial—a marble 23-foot shaft topped by a figure in ancient
armour—spirit of war and victory. On four lower pedestals Revolutionary,
Civil war, Spanish-American and World war soldiers look out, each
leaning on his instrument of death. When Mr. Burman and the park
department planned this statue they probably had no thought that it
would be so quickly outmoded. No niche has been provided for a warrior
of the present conflict.
Another figure in the park is The Pioneer Woman, donated by the Woman’s
club and the park board. The trees along Memory garden and Memorial
drive—north of Sheridan boulevard—were planted in memory of the Lincoln
soldiers who fell in the first World war.