Edgar Miller

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - As Andrzej Dajnowski recalls it, the seven animal sculptures trucked to his Forest Park studio in 2007 from the Jane Addams Homes public housing development on the city's Near West Side were to stay with him for a few months, enough time for the conservator and his staff to carefully rehabilitate each piece.

"It was supposed to be our project for the winter three years ago," he said.

Dajnowski removed decades of paint covering them - from the goat, the ram, a rabbit, a puma and the others - getting down to their rough stone exterior. Then word came, he said, that the money for his work had run out.

Three years later, the sculptures remain in limbo. A nearly 7-foot-tall bull fronted by two now-unrecognizable animals, both worn down by use and the elements, sits atop a sled of bricks, looming over Dajnowski's workroom. Six smaller sculptures, each a little more than 3 feet tall, are lined up in a corner.

While the Chicago-based Driehaus Foundation recently paid $10,000 to restore one of the smaller pieces, a pair of prancing wolves, funds to bring the others back to life haven't materialized.

Dajnowski estimates the remaining six need at least $100,000 worth of work. Chunks of stone are missing from some of the animal's torsos; the faces from others are gone. There are pockmarks over many of them - three months of full-time work at the minimum, Dajnowski says. But no one is even paying him the $400 a month he says he needs to charge for storing them. It isn't clear when the sculptures will return to the city.

"Pretty much the project doesn't have any money," Dajnowski says. "No funding at all."

Installed in 1938 in the Jane Addams Homes, near Taylor Street, the sculptures have a long history on the Near West Side. Edgar Miller, a renowned Chicago artist, created them with funding from the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal economic recovery programs. Generations of children who grew up in public housing in and near Chicago's Little Italy played on the animals, clambering over them.

The Addams Homes and other parts of the ABLA public housing project are now mostly gone. Related Midwest's Roosevelt Square mixed-income development is meant to replace ABLA. The project has stalled, a fact the development team has blamed on the weak economy and difficult conditions in the housing market.

When the Roosevelt Square project is done, the Near West Side will have 2,441 more apartments. Working the restored animal sculptures into the development was seen as a way to link the new neighborhood to its past.

"We are delighted to help preserve these marvelous sculptures which once again symbolize our hope for the future of the residents, the neighborhood, and the city," a representative from Related said, according to a housing authority press release from April 2007.

Dajnowski said a member of the development team told him three years ago that funds had run dry after he finished the initial cleaning of the statues. He said he told a representative from the firm about his storage costs then. A contact at Related did not return a call.

"From my understanding, it's a combination," Aguilar said. Plans remain on the table to include the sculptures in a new park slated for 1109 S. Throop, according to Aguilar. But construction of that park is dependent on sales of market-rate units at Roosevelt Square, and those haven't moved as planned.

"Nobody could have foreseen that the economy was going to slow down as it did," Aguilar said.

The animal sculptures could, according to Aguilar, also be installed at a public housing museum that various groups are working to create at 1322-24 W. Taylor, the sole remaining Jane Addams Homes' building.

Promoting that project is why Driehaus, one of the backers of the museum, paid to restore the sculpture of the wolves. Fischer said the foundation wanted to include that piece with an exhibit about the museum on display at the Merchandise Mart. At an estimated 7,000 pounds, however, the piece proved too heavy to place on the mart's floor.

"We had hoped once people saw what wonderful treasures they are when they are fixed up," Fischer said, "others would want to contribute to fixing them up."

The animal sculptures are on the radar screen of some history-minded groups. Joe Loundy, president of the Chicago Art Deco Society, said these sculptures are a priority for his organization this year. They'd like to organize a fundraiser to help pay for the restoration.

Heather Becker, CEO of the Chicago Conservation Center, participated in a 2007 press conference that celebrated moving the animals to Dajnowski's studio in Forest Park

"Over the last couple of years, getting money for these kinds of projects has really dwindled," she said. And it's never easy to fundraise, Becker said, even in good economic times, noting she knew of mural restoration work that went unfunded for five years.

"I would say normally everybody expects you to finish the project as soon as you can," Dajnowski said. "They are always kind of on your back demanding a complete project, as soon as you can."
That hasn't been the case with the Jane Addams animal sculptures.