Ca. 369 Summit Avenue
Built: 1923
Style: Period Revival
An unoffical playground for children since the late nineteenth century, this triangle of land was presented to the City in 1923 by Emilie B. Cochran in memory of her husband, Thomas Cochran, who lived in St. Paul from 1867 until his death in 1906. Thomas and Emilie Cochran lived in houses at 229 Summit (now the parking lot for the Cathedral) and on Western Avenue near this park.
In 1926, Thomas Cochran's son commissioned Paul Manship to create a sculpture to stand in Cochran Park to honor his father. Manship created -Indian Hunter and His Dog- to stand in a pool surrounded by four bronze geese. In the 1960's this sculpture was vandalized. The neighborhood which was feeling the effects of urban flight, and had begun to decline. The city of St. Paul decided to move the sculpture to a safer spot near the Como Park Conservatory. A fiberglass copy of the sculpture was made for Cochran Park.
A few years ago, with the decline now reversed and the neighborhood once again a popular place to live, neighbors petitioned the city to move the original bronze sculpture back in the park, so the two sculptures were switched. Today the fiberglass copy stands in Como Park. The original bronze sculpture once again stands in Cochran Park |
