Hand of God
Sculptor: Carl Milles  Photograph: Chad Stuemke

This statue sits outside the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice at St. Antoine and Clinton Streets. Fittingly, it was cast in honor of Detroit politician and jurist Frank Murphy (1890-1949), who served at various times as Assistant District Attorney, Recorder's Court judge, mayor of Detroit, governor-general of the Philippines, U. S. High Commissioner of the Philippines, governor of Michigan, United States Attorney General, and U. S. Supreme Court Justice.

It features a nude figure emerging from the left hand of God. Although commissioned in 1949 and completed by 1953, the work, partly because of the male nudity involved, was kept in storage for a decade and a half. The work was chosen in tribute to Murphy by Walter P. Reuther and Ira W. Jayne. It was placed on a pedestal in 1970 with the help of sculptor Marshall Fredericks, who was a Milles student.

Stevens T. Mason
Sculptor: Albert Weinger Photograph: Reynolds Farley 

Stevens Thomson Mason (October 27, 1811–January 4, 1843), was known as Stevens T. Mason or simply Tom Mason.

But he was also " The Stripling" and the "Boy Governor" because of his age (or rather lack of it) when he was appointed acting Territorial Secretary at 19, acting Territorial Governor at 22. He guided Michigan to statehood and was elected its first Governor at 24 in 1835, serving until 1840. He remains the youngest state governor in American history.

Mason hated the "Boy Governor" handle, bestowed on him by a newspaper editor in Ann Arbor. When Mason encountered the editor in Detroit, Mason punched him—which was consistent with the fiery temper and penchant for fistfights that earned him another of his nicknames: "Young Hotspur."

His statue sits in Capitol Park at Griswold and State Streets.

Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko was a Polish-Lithuanian general and military leader. He is a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus. But he earned monuments in the United States by fighting as a colonel in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War; by 1783, the Congress had breveted him to the rank of brigadier general and he had become a naturalized citizen of the United States.

The Detroit News, reports that he was assigned a black slave named Agrippa Hull, whom he eventually freed. Later, moving to France as a special U. S. ambassador, he instructed that his lands be sold to buy freedom and education for other slaves.

After the Revolution, he led the 1794 Kosciusko Uprising, a failed attempt to liberate Poland and Lithuania from Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Prussia.

His monument, erected at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Third in 1973, is a replica of one at the entrance to Wawel Castle in Krakow, the site of Kosciusko's tomb. It was a gift from the people of Krakow.

General Alexander Macomb
Sculptor: Adolph Weinman  Photograph: Elliott Shevin

Alexander Macomb was the scion of a wealthy and prominent Detroit family, which owned not only most of Macomb County but Grosse Ile and Belle Isle as well. But Alexander chose a military career, distinguishing himself in the War of 1812 at the battle of Plattsburgh, N. Y.

In 1906, Adolph Weinman was selected to memorialize Macomb. Weinman, 36 years old at the time, was not yet well known, though he had worked with the renowned Daniel Chester French. The result, at Washington Boulevard and Michigan Avenue, so delighted Detroiters that Weinman later won the commission for the memorial to Mayor William C. Maybury.

General Casimir Pulaski
Sculptor: Ferenc Varga  Photograph: Reynolds Farley

Kazimierz Michał Wacław Wiktor Pułaski (March 6, 1745– October 11, 1779), was a Polish soldier, member of the Polish nobility and politician who has been called "the father of American cavalry."

After serving as a military commander in the failed Bar Confederation uprising against Russian domination of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, he emigrated to North America as a soldier of fortune. He saved the life of George Washington and became a general in the Continental Army, dying of wounds suffered in the Battle of Savannah.

His statue, across the street from and facing that of Alexander Macomb, was installed in 1970.