America’s Sculptor In Roby—Art Meets Industry

Jerry Banik, July 2023

As America struggled in the throes of the Great Depression, a man known as “America’s Sculptor,” an artist renowned the world over, was busy in his Chicago studio creating a work of art that would soon grace a building in nearby Roby, Indiana.

The sculptor’s name was Laredo Taft.  The building was a recreation facility under construction, to be called Daly Hall.  The intersection of the two was a rare occurrence:  the blending of an industrial plant in a small, midwestern town, and a piece of custom artwork from a master craftsman.

Who was Laredo Taft?

Laredo Taft was the first sculptor approached to create Mount Rushmore. He declined the offer, he said, due to ill health.  He was sought after to create a monumental carving of General Robert E. Lee into Stone Mountain, in Georgia, but declined that, too.  A distant cousin of U.S. President William Howard Taft, Laredo was a graduate of the University of Illinois school of art, who went on to study at the prestigious School of Fine Arts in Paris.

After Paris, he taught for many years at the School of the Chicago Art Institute.  He played an important role in Chicago’s great world’s fair, the Columbian Exposition of 1893, which took place in Jackson Park, just seven miles from Roby as the crow flies.  Taft supervised the work of the fair’s many sculptors, whose pieces captivated the fair’s estimated 25 million visitors. He was a leader in training women in the art of sculpting, and his female students were instrumental in completing many of the world’s fair pieces on time.

Taft published The History of American Sculpture, the first survey of that subject.  It remained the standard reference on the subject for decades.  It is estimated he gave more than 4,000 lectures in his lifetime.

His studio in Chicago remains today, and has been designated a National Historic Landmark. 

Daly Hall

The Western Glucose Company, founded in Roby in 1906, would later become American Maize Products, also known as Amaizo.

Daly Hall, created for the workers at the corn processing plant, was built by Amaizo employees near the plant’s entrance on Indianapolis Boulevard, with $50,000 of funding from the company, “In recognition of true friendship and loyalty as a lasting symbol of cooperation.”  Dedicated in 1934 at the company’s annual picnic, it was named in honor of long time company vice president and general superintendent Raymond E. Daly.

The hall had facilities and equipment for basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, ping-pong, billiards, boxing and wrestling, as well as locker rooms, showers, social rooms and a dining room where many employees ate their lunch.

Over the years, Daly Hall blossomed into something of a community center for Robertsdale and Whiting, having been made available to organizations for fundraisers, wedding receptions, dances, parties, banquets and other gatherings.

Thousands of local residents fondly recall the many roller skating parties their schools held there over the years.

Laredo Taft’s Daly Hall frieze

Taft designed and created a 7-by-13-foot, concrete frieze, an architectural decoration installed above the doors of the hall’s main entrance, depicting men at work and at play.  In 1998, when it was determined the space taken up by Daly Hall was needed for other purposes, the building was demolished, but the frieze was saved.  This unique work of art is now on display in the lobby of the Towle Theatre on Hohman Avenue in downtown Hammond.

Interested in seeing more of Taft’s work, in person?

Laredo Taft was famously prolific. His works are on display all across the country, but many of his pieces can be seen nearby in Indiana and Illinois, especially in and around Chicago.

Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum, located just a few blocks north of Wrigley Field, is a great place to go to see some of Taft’s work, as well as many monuments designed by famous architects.

Taft’s studio can be found on the south side of the University of Chicago campus, on the grand boulevard known as the Midway Plaisance. Now a park, the Plaisance connects Jackson and Washington parks, and was used for the entertainment section of the 1893 World’s Fair.

Taft liked to build big.  His Fountain of Time is situated at the western edge of the Midway Plaisance in Chicago.  It measures 126 feet, 10 inches in length, and is made of 250 tons of hollow-cast concrete, reinforced with steel.  Built in a mold made of more than 4,000 pieces, it took twelve years to complete.

The Eternal Indian, also known as the Black Hawk monument, is near the town of Oregon, Illinois, about twenty miles south of Rockford.

The statue is 48 feet tall and stands 125 feet above the Rock River.  It weighs in at more than half-a-million pounds and was said to have been the second largest concrete monolithic statue in the world.

At the Chicago Art Institute, outside the building, you can find the Fountain Of The Great Lakes, one of Taft’s best known works.

Inside is his Solitude of the Soul.

At the beautiful Garfield Park Conservatory, which is roughly three miles west of the Loop, there are two marble Taft sculptures, Idyl and Pastoral.

The Heald Square Monument stands alongside the riverwalk in downtown Chicago, between Wabash Avenue and State Street.  It depicts George Washington and the two principal financers of the American Revolution.

There are also many Taft sculptures around the country outside of Indiana and Illinois, not the least of which is the well-known Columbus Fountain at Union Station in Washington, D.C., one of the country’s first, great union railroad terminals.