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Belle Camp Blog
 

The Lion

By

Published on September 1, 2023

By Tom McGehee
Museum Home Director

For over 90 years a large cast iron Lion has lived in Bellingrath Gardens.  He is always popular with children who enjoy climbing up on his back and no doubt thousands of photographs have been snapped of that scene.

He originally stood in the front yard of Caroline Purvis Marshall (1848-1941) who resided in a handsome home, which still stands at 952 Government Street.  Her late husband, John H. Marshall, had been a partner in a wholesale grocery and liquor business with John Bradford Davis.

A nearly identical lion came up for sale a few years ago and was described as having been cast for display at the Philadelphia Centennial celebration of 1876.  The maker was Robert Wood & Co., also of Philadelphia.  His firm was advertising in Mobile as early as 1852 when a newspaper advertisement offered “Iron railings, Statuary, Greyhounds, Lions, Hat Stands, Tables and Settees.”

A pencil sketch of the Lion by architect George B. Rogers is in the archives of Bellingrath Gardens and Home.  It is dated 1931 and so is safe to assume he has resided with us ever since.  Before his placement on his own terrace on the west side of Mirror Lake the Lion had stood among the plantings above the Rockery.

Mobile city directories show the Marshalls as residing on Government Street as early as 1877, and no one knows if the lion was there when they moved in or was a later addition.  Judge Herndon Inge grew up on that block and recalled the lion as a favorite for neighborhood children.  Some things never change.