Statues of Mayors Hazen S. Pingree and William C. Maybury, Detroit

The statues of Mayors Hazen S. Pingree and William H. Maybury commemorate these civic leaders of Detroit. Their statues are located in Grand Circus Park near one another, but they were far from friends – instead, they were mortal enemies who "hated, detested, loathed each other," as the Free Press wrote in 1941.

Hazen S. Pingree served as Detroit mayor from 1890 to 1897, leaving office only after being elected governor of Michigan. Old Ping, as he was known, was named one of the 10 best mayors in U.S. history in a poll of scholars, who noted that his "role as an advanced social reformer was unmatched by any big-city mayor in the last half of the 19th century." His tough-love form of social reform, historians note, was the forerunner for the reforms of the Progressive Era. Besides his social reforms, the Republican mayor is best known for turning vacant land into vegetable patches to feed the city's needy during the economic downturn of the 1890s.

The mustachioed mayor kicking back next to him, William Cotter Maybury had previously been Detroit's city attorney and a congressman. He "won local, if not national, renown as a baby-kisser. He just cooed his way into office telling mothers how beautiful their babies were," the Free Press wrote in 1941. "For a while no mother thought her child would have a chance in life unless he had been kissed by dear Mr. Maybury – that nice, nice man." He did not make waves with Big Business and didn't continue Pingree's all-out fight for municipally owned utilities. He may have been timid, but Detroiters approved of Maybury's laid-back, relaxed style. Industry leaders were particular supporters of his pro-business philosophy toward government, and Maybury is to thank in part for the vast number of factories that began to dot the city under his watch.