Adrian Monument

This monument is unique in design with several tablets containing names of 81 men from the area and a large pillar above with an acorn style ern on top.  The pillar came from a bank building in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.  It sits in the middle of Monument Park in Adrian Michigan surrounded by monuments representing all the wars right up to present day.   Every Veterans Day they hold a ceremony here and soldiers place wreaths at the monuments in honor of those who have passed.  The park is located between Maumee St. on the north and Church St. to the south about 2 blocks east of downtown Adrian.   Also surrounding the monument are 4 cannons on wooden bases.  2 are original while the other 2 are reproductions. 

The Civil War Memorial is a marble monument situated in the center of Memorial Park in Adrian, Michigan.  

 The monument was designated as a Michigan Historic Site 

On August 13, 1971 and later added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 29, 1972. It was unveiled on July 4, 1870 to commemorate soldiers from Adrian who died in the American Civil War  (1861–1865).

The Civil War Memorial ties together the cities of Adrian and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The column used in the monument was originally one of the six marble columns on the eastern facade of the former Bank of Pennsylvania  building in Philadelphia. The bank building and the column itself were built in 1799. The Bank of Pennsylvania building, which was considered one of the first examples of Greek Revival Architecture in the United States, was demolished in 1868. With Congressional permission, one of the six columns was donated to the city of Adrian from the bank.  With the aid of the Hon.F. C. Beaman a member of congress from this district and J. Fred Meyers of Washington a former well known citizen of Adrian along with the Hon. Hugh McCulloch then Secretary of the Treasury  of the United States the column was donated to the association. It remains the only surviving piece of the original Bank of Pennsylvania building.

Architect and sculptor Benjamin H. Latrobe designed the bank.  The cost of the base in which the column stands came at a cost of $10,000.00 which was raised by the monument association. The monument was unveiled in Memorial Park on July 4, 1870 by the Adrian Soldiers’ Monument Association. It was the second such commemorative monument erected in Lenawee County following the war — the first being a cemetery monument erected in nearby Franklin Township.  The column rests on top of a concrete octagonal pedestal, and each side contains a bronze tablet inscribed with the names of 84 fallen soldiers and the regiment to which they belonged. The column itself is surmounted with a metal urn. The inscription on the base of the pedestal reads, “1870. Erected by citizens of Adrian in memory of our fallen soldiers. By such as these was our Union saved in the great struggle of 1861–1865.”

List of Men on Bronze Panels