It was at Cranbrook Milles developed his largest projects during the 1930s: Vision of Peace for the City Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota; Doors of Agriculture and Industry for the capitol building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and the Meeting of the Waters Fountain in St. Louis, Missouri, which was the most important for his visibility in America.



During World War II, new commissions all but stopped, but prominent exhibitions continued at art museums in Baltimore, Boston, and Chicago. The project that consumed Milles during his final decade in America was the Fountain of Faith commissioned in 1939 for the National Memorial Park, a private cemetery in Virginia near Washington, D.C. The contract called for fourteen sculptures representing reunion after death. By the time of the dedication in 1952, the fountain included thirty- eight sculptures and the largest of his career. Milles wanted this commission to be his “masterpiece,” the project that would define his career and help him achieve immortality. 



Photo: Panoramio