The fountain that came to St. Joseph from a Chicago exposition

Up on the grassy bluff in St. Joseph, where the land drops away to Lake Michigan, two robed figures stand over a cast-iron fountain. They are the Maids of the Mist, and they reached this beach town by way of a Chicago exposition.

The fountain was made in New York in 1872 and installed in Chicago for the Interstate Industrial Exposition in 1873. That was a long-running industrial show, not the World’s Columbian Exposition that opened in 1893. When the earlier exposition ended in 1891, the owner of St. Joseph’s Whitcomb Hotel bought the fountain and brought it across the lake. It was installed on the bluff in 1892.

The figures are known as Constance and Hope, but generations of St. Joseph residents have simply known them as the ladies on the bluff. Their location is easy to place: Lake Bluff Park, across from the old Whitcomb, above the beach and harbor.

A fountain that spends more than a century in lake wind needs help now and then. The Maids were removed for a year-long restoration, then returned to Lake Bluff Park for a public rededication. The work repaired and conserved the fountain instead of replacing the landmark with a replica, so the figures on the bluff are still the old cast-iron pair St. Joseph adopted in 1892.