DOWNTOWN — A South Loop park is being redesigned to help Columbia College students — but it has lost its iconic sculptures as a result.
The garden, at 11th Street and Wabash Avenue, is run by Columbia College. For years it featured paths that twisted around various concrete sculptures, including one of three wolves standing against a wall, dubbed “Livonian Wolves at the Leaping Wall.” The statues had been featured in Atlas Obscura, which documents unique sights around the world.
But the garden is undergoing renovations, and the sculptures were “not salvaged … due to some internal miscommunication,” said Columbia spokeswoman Lambrini Lukidis.
Some of the sculptures had been vandalized and they were deteriorating due to age and the weather, Lukidis said.
The school reached out to some of the artists who had crafted the work and looked into relocating the pieces, but it was while those attempts were underway that the sculptures were accidentally destroyed.
Besides the wolves, the garden had featured statues of a “rather creepy specter lurking beneath a stone altar,” large balls and a creature sitting on top of a 12-foot-tall pole, according to Atlas Obscura.
The garden is being turned it into an outdoor area where students can stage small-scale theatrical and musical productions and host events, Lukidis said.