Avenue of the Musicians

These 12 limestone figures each stand at approximately 27” high, and are a mix of 10 originals purchased in England, plus two copies commissioned by Robert Allerton. Additional copies were made in 1977, which now reside in the Mansion Library.

Reserve the Avenue of the Musicians

Visitors usually call these stone figures “Chinese” musicians, but a closer look shows that their features are Western. Initially, Robert Allerton obtained 10 statues cut in soft stone to use as garden ornaments; later he had Lew Wagy, a Monticello gravestone carver, make two more. For a long time all twelve stood along a wooded path in the Lost Garden on the other side of the Sangamon River, but erosion, squirrels sharpening their teeth, and acts of vandalism eventually necessitated replacement. The new group functions nicely as a “musical interlude” along the path between the Maze Garden and the Sunken Garden, but they do not faithfully reproduce details of the six different instruments shown in the English originals. According to John Allerton, those prototypes were purchased before his time and “nobody knows the history of them.”

From A Guide to Art at the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign, Robert Allerton Park, and Chicago by Muriel Scheinman. Copyright 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission from the University of Illinois Press.