Johnny Appleseed Downtown Bench and Glenbrook Mall Carving
Street View photo from Google maps of Johnny Appleseed bench downtown at 227 Lincoln Highway aka Jefferson Blvd. in front of Hampton Inn & Suites Fort Wayne next to Parkview Field.
Johnny Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, is memorialized with a bronze sculpture located at the Hampton Inn & Suites in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana. Johnny is seated on a bench with a shiny red apple in his outstretched hand. The apple is painted with red acrylic paint, making it stand out against the bronze figure. The statue is designed with an open seat where visitors can sit alongside the American and Fort Wayne icon. A plaque next to the figure reads “‘Making Children Smile’ Johnny Appleseed 1774-1845”.
Gary Tillery was the artist on this tribute to Johnny Appleseed, who called Fort Wayne home from the 1830s until his passing in 1845.
Johnny Appleseed Statue Commission: White Lodging commissioned Rotblatt-Amrany Studio of Timeless Creations, Inc., based in Highwood, Illinois, with Gary Tillery as the lead artist on the project. Weighing nearly 400 pounds, the statue is crafted in traditional silicon bronze and took nearly ten months from concept to installation.
Johnny Appleseed Festival Board helps unveil Johnny Appleseed in downtown Ft Wayne. Over the past year, the festival, along with Urbana University, home of the Johnny Appleseed Historical Society/Museum, have been working with White Lodging as they commissioned an artist to design a sculpture to sit downtown outside their new Hampton Inn & Suites.
Fast forward almost a year later - its here and was revealed during the ribbon cutting and grand opening of the hotel.
We hope you'll all visit downtown Fort Wayne and if you get your picture with it, post it here to FB for us to see!
Thank you White Lodging for including us in this memorable day and permanent mark on Fort Wayne.
The Apple Orchard at Glenbrook Mall is a treasure. Fort Wayne’s “Johnny Appleseed” carving by L. Dean Butler now stands in the H&M store at Glenbrook Square Mall.
At age 85, sculptor Hector Garcia wants to live long enough to make Fort Wayne’s first serious public work depicting John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed. The folk art carving in the mall doesn’t count, he says. Nor does Johnny TinCap, the playful mascot of Fort Wayne’s minor league baseball team. “Those are cartoons,” explains Garcia, whose numerous sculptures include the towering Little Turtle in Headwaters Park and Jesuit Priest where the city’s three rivers meet. “I want the real person.”
January 23, 2023 post on True Fort Wayne Indiana History on Facebook with a photo captioned: Sculptor Dean Butler has almost completed the basic figure shaping on his Johnny Appleseed wood carving at Glenbrook Mall. Butler started on his 10-foot tall sculpture of the early Fort Wayne personality earlier this Summer and hopes to finish it by the end of August. (Staff Photo by Argil Shock). Handwriting in blue ink July 24, 1976.
