(Source of top image: Florida Collection, Main Library, Jax; Bottom image: Florida State Archives)

Just who or what does Memorial Park memorialize?  The popular spot serves as a tribute to Floridians killed during the First World War.  The Jacksonville Rotary Club was the park's biggest backer as it was planned & built during the early Twenties. 

Memorial is located two blocks east of the Five Points shopping district.  It occupies a location formerly known as "the picnic ground," where African American church congregations occasionally baptized members on the sandy riverbank.  Memorial Park was designed by the Olmsted Brothers, sons of America's foremost landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, who laid out New York's Central Park and the gardens around Florida's Singing Tower.

The renowned sculptor of Winged Victory, C. Adrian Pillars, lived in St. Augustine from about 1919 to 1932.  For the next three years, he taught at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, and he passed away in Jacksonville in 1937. His home & studio at 16 May Street, "The Pink Castle," still stands as a St. Augustine landmark.  His father managed the City Gates Filling Station in that town. 

"Winged Victory" represents the best known work by Pillars.  He also created two statues that grace Washington, D.C.  One is of the Confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith, a St. Augustine native, and the other depicts Dr. John Gorrie, an Apalachicola resident often credited with laying the groundwork for refrigeration and air conditioning.