| City of Presidents |
| A Downtown Focus for Rapid City |
Don’t be surprised to come face to face with an American President when walking in downtown Rapid City!
Life-size statues of America’s chief executives are being created in bronze by leading South Dakota sculptors and installed on strategic street corners. Five talented South Dakota artists have teamed up to create the sculptures: Edward Hlavka, Lee Leuning, John Lopez, James Van Nuys, and James Maher.
The “City of Presidents” project was conceived as a combined artistic, cultural, historic, and patriotic approach to economic development. Beginning in 2000, two Presidents from the beginning of the American nation and two from the contemporary past were placed on Rapid City’s downtown streets, with a projected completion of all past presidents in 2010.
Bronze statues of the Presidents dedicated and placed on display during the first seven years of the project are:
2000 – George Washington, John Adams, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush
2001 – Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Gerald Ford (and dog Liberty), Jimmy Carter
2002 – James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon
2003 – Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy (and son John Jr.)
2004 - William H. Harrison, John Tyler, and Harry Truman.
2005 - Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and James Polk.
2006 - Warren G. Harding, Woodrow Wilson, Zachary Taylor, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
July, 2007 - Millard Fillmore
September, 2007 – Theodore Roosevelt, James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, and William Howard Taft
Fall 2008 – U.S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, William McKinley, and Grover Cleveland
The following is a tentative list of the upcoming statue placements:
Fall 2009 – Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison
Fall 2010 – James Garfield, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush
Thereafter, each succeeding President will join the statuary upon the completion of his or her term(s) in office.
A visitor’s center and gallery for the City of Presidents project is located at 631 Main Street in Rapid City.
For a list of Presidential statues, their locations, and close-up photos, please refer to VISITOR’s walking tour of downtown Rapid City in our map section.
For information on how to contribute to the downtown project, please call Nancy at 605-348-7734.
|
|
|
|
