The Lincoln Monument is one of the first statues brought into Fairmount Park. Artist Randolph Rogers was commissioned by the Lincoln Monument Association to create the statue and its base. The statue, that was made from bronze and dedicated in 1871, was named Lincoln the Emancipator. The cost of this large statue and its base was $33,000.
Close to the banks of the Schuylkill River are three tall columns, each topped with a pipe- or piccolo-playing angel. As these angels are playing, they appear to be frolicking to their own music. This creation by Swedish artist Carl Milles was part of a five-angel sculpture intended for a private site in Philadelphia. But when the plans were abandoned, two of the angels went to separate locations and the remaining three were installed in Fairmount Park in 1972.
Situated in the rocks of the Mount Pleasant portion of Fairmont Park is Frederic Remington's Cowboy. This is a bronze statue of a cowboy on a horse at the edge of a cliff and is the only outdoor public work that Frederic Remington ever produced. It was erected in Fairmount Park in 1908.
In the same vicinity as the Playing Angels statue is a statue of Ulysses S. Grant riding a horse. This Grant statue was sculpted by Daniel Chester French in 1897. French's longtime collaborator Edward Clark Potter sculpted the horse statue that the statue of Grant sits upon. It was officially dedicated on the 77th anniversary of Grant's birth. Thousands of Philidelphians and President William McKinley attended the dedication event.
