Eastern Illinois city makes plans to move WWI memorial

DANVILLE, Ill. (AP) - Officials in the eastern Illinois city of Danville are trying to move, clean and more prominently display a World War I memorial that's nearly a century old.

Danville's superintendent of community improvement, Shelly Larson, and superintendent of parks and public property, Steve Lane, have finished a proposed redesign for Victory Park, where the Victory Monument stands, The News-Gazette (http://bit.ly/2r83G7R ) reported.

Plans include moving the structure toward the center of the park, creating a parking lot and adding landscaping to enhance the monument. The project will also serve as a gateway to the downtown business district and the city's riverfront.

City officials say the statue easily goes unnoticed in its current location and that it's hard to take a photo of it without stepping into traffic.

"You can't stand in front of it without someone getting hit by a car," Larson said.

The monument, designed by sculptor Lorado Taft, was dedicated on Nov. 11, 1922, the fourth anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. It features a bronze statue of Victory with four figures at her base, including a sailor, a soldier, a Marine and a Red Cross nurse.

Landmarks Illinois, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving historic places across the state, featured the monument in April on its annual list of Most Endangered Historic Places.

Frank Butterfield, director of Landmarks' Springfield office, said the statue is one of the more significant of the WWI memorials in the state. He noted that Taft was a prominent sculptor in the state.

The monument was moved to its current spot in the 1950s from an island in the middle of the nearby intersection.

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Information from: The News-Gazette, http://www.news-gazette.com