Hazen S. Pingree Monument

Seated in Grand Circus Park, silently watching crowds scurrying across Woodward, is a soldier who fought for his country, a mayor who saved his city, and a governor who served his state. For a generation, however, he was simply known as the "Idol of the People."The Hazen S. Pingree Monument honors a man who served as Detroit mayor from 1890 to 1897, leaving office only after being elected governor of Michigan. Old Ping, as he was known, was named one of the 10 best mayors in U.S. history in a poll of scholars for Melvin Holli's 1999 book, "The American Mayor." In it, Holli writes that Pingree's "role as an advanced social reformer was unmatched by any big-city mayor in the last half of the 19th century." His tough-love form of social reform, historians note, was the forerunner for the reforms of the Progressive Era. Besides his social reforms, the Republican mayor is best known for turning vacant land into vegetable patches to feed the city's needy during the economic downturn of the 1890s.
historicdetroit.org/buildings/hazen-s-pingree-monument