Context

This monument memorializes the 25th U.S. President, William McKinley, who governed from 1897 to 1901 when he was killed by an assassin at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley led the country into the Spanish American War, which secured territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific formerly colonial possessions of Spain. The monument, created by prominent Chicago sculptor Charles Mulligan, was made from the melted down bronze sculpture of Christopher Columbus, that stood on a tall pedestal in Grant Park from 1893 to 1897.