John Plankinton

The John Plankinton statue is a six foot lifelike representation of the businessman and industrialist. It took the sculptor Richard Henry Park six months to make and was initially placed in the Plankinton House Hotel in downtown Milwaukee in 1892. The property in 1916 was redeveloped into the Plankinton Arcade shopping plaza. The property was again redeveloped in the 1970s into the John Plankinton Mall at the same location where the hotel once stood. The latest redevelopment of the property occurred in 1980 to 1982 and renamed the Shops of Grand Avenue. The statue was restored in 2012 and placed on a 15 foot pedestal becoming a permanent part of the shopping plaza. It is now viewed by hundreds of shoppers daily.