Hazen S. Pingree
Sculptor: Rudolph Schwartz  Photograph: Dave Hogg

Hazen Stuart Pingree (August 30, 1840 – June 18, 1901) was a cobbler by trade, making his millions as a shoe manufacturer. But he led a colorful career as soldier, sportsman, and politician, serving as Republican mayor of Detroit for four terms (1889–1896) and the 24th Governor of Michigan (1896–1901).

Elected mayor of Detroit in 1889 on a platform of exposing and ending corruption in city paving contracts, sewer contracts, and the school board, Pingree turned to fighting privately owned utility monopolies by promoting municipally-owned competitors. He tried to create a municipally-owned transit company to compete with the Detroit City Railways in an attempt to keep fares to three cents, but found himself barred by the Michigan Constitution.

Pingree once had the entire Detroit Board of Education arrested, calling them a bunch of thieves, grafters and rascals. He also plowed up city parks and land to plant potatoes for the hungry.

In 1901, Pingree arrived in London, England, while returning from an African safari with his son and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, who had attended Pingree's gubernatorial inauguration in his Rough Riders uniform. He was stricken with peritonitis and was unable to return to the U.S. King Edward VII even sent his own physicians to London's Grand Hotel to assist in his recovery. Just before his wife and daughter embarked from New York to visit him, they heard the news that her husband had died.

The plaque below Pingree's figure reads in part, "He was the first to warn the people of the great danger threatened by powerful private corporations, and the first to awake to the great inequalities in taxation and to initiate steps for reforms. THE IDOL OF THE PEOPLE."

William C. Maybury
Sculptor: Adolph Alexander Weinman   Photograph: Dave Hogg

According to the Detroit News, in contrast to Pingree, few mourned the passing of William Cotter Maybury (November 20, 1848 – May 6, 1909) who served as a Democratic Congressman from Michigan from March 4, 1883 to March 7, 1887, declining to run for a third term.

Also unlike Pingree, Maybury was a high-priced attorney and a sanctimonious pillar of the local Episcopal Church. He disdained demon rum and once banned a performance by English showgirl Lily Langtry as too salacious for Detroit audiences.

He was mayor of Detroit from 1897 to 1905, during which time he made an unsuccessful run for Governor in 1900. Maybury is interred in Elwood Park Cemetery.

Catching Up
Sculptor: J. Seward Johnson, Jr.   Photograph: Balthazar Korab

So lifelike is this fellow standing on the platform of the Grand Circus Park People Mover station that at least one passenger has wondered aloud why he doesn't get on the train. Catching Up is one of seven copies across the country, made unique to Detroit only in the paper he's holding: on one side is a page from the Detroit Free Press, and on the other a page from the Detroit News.