At 125, Atlanta’s Grant Park wants its statues back

“These things have just vanished over the years, and we’d love to find some of them,” says Phil Cuthbertson, director of the Grant Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that works with the city to improve Atlanta’s oldest municipal park.

On Saturday, Grant Park will celebrate its 125th anniversary with a parade that kicks off a yearlong observance. It was May 17, 1883, when Col. Lemuel P. Grant, a pioneer railroad man, deeded 100 acres to the city with the stipulation that “spiritous liquor shall not be sold thereon.”

“Mr. Grant’s Park,” as it was known, became a gathering place for boaters and bicyclists and promenading Victorians. It only became more popular after the city established a zoo there and then added the Cyclorama, the colossal Civil War painting in the round.

To mark the birthday, the conservancy is launching a sort of scavenger hunt for some of the statuary that has mysteriously disappeared from the park over time.

“Some of these things might still exist,” Cuthbertson says.

Lost lake

When famed park designer Frederick Law Olmsted’s sons drew a landscape plan for Grant Park in 1904, they thought its nicest feature was a man-made body of water called Lake Abana. It was drained in the 1960s to create zoo parking. Unable to restore the lake, the conservancy brought water back into the main park in 2003 with a new pond.

Where’s Lemuel?

In 1910, a 12-foot stone marker was erected to honor the park’s namesake. No one knows where it went. The conservancy would like to find the monument or fabricate a replica.

Escaped lions

Grant Park has been home to big cats since the zoo opened there in 1889. But there also used to be a pair of impressive stone lions at one of the park’s entrances. They vanished without a roar.

Going stag

Accounts from the 1890s tell of a bronze stag that once stood in the park. Little else is known about the beast.

Time ran out

A sundial once decorated the area outside the swimming pool. Only the stone base remains.

Missing in action

Col. Grant built the fortifications that ringed Atlanta during the Civil War. One of the forts stood on a hill in what became the park. All that remains of it today are earthworks. Fort Walker, as it was later named, once had an observation tower and three Confederate artillery pieces. One of those guns is displayed inside the Cyclorama, but the others are MIA.

Look homeward, angel

Atlantans once drew water from five springs that bubbled to life in the park. One of them — Bethesda Springs — was marked by the statue of an angel. Apparently, it flew away. The springs were diverted into the city’s combined sewer overflow system; the conservancy would like to bring them back to the surface.

A PLEA

• If you have information about any of the park’s missing pieces, contact the conservancy at 404-521-0938, or by e-mail at info@gpconservancy.org.