Granite Bullfrog by Unknown
The Frog Pond in Como Park is named for a small granite bullfrog that sits on a concrete slab in the middle of the pond. But the history of the sculpture is a little murky. As near as we can tell, the frog was created by an unknown artist in Japan in 1923.
The Como Park web site tells us this:
“Shortly after the World’s Fair in St. Louis, architect Stchikawa designed a Japanese Imperial garden in Como Park. The only remaining vestige is this large granite bull frog.”
The St. Louis World’s Fair was in 1904 and that’s the same year Dr. Rudolph Schiffman donated trees and shrubs for a Japanese garden in Como Park. But that description is misleading as the frog was not an original component of the garden. Historic signs in Como Park’s Street Car Station tell us that the large granite frog “dates to 1923,” a date corroborated by the book Monumental Minnesota which also tells us the frog was a gift of Fred Crosby.
Fred Crosby was the son of Oliver Crosby (no connection to Crosby Farm Park), a wealthy businessman who built a sprawling estate overlooking the Mississippi River called Stonebridge. Oliver Crosby died in 1922. According to an article in Ramsey County History, the Crosby family brought the frog back from Japan and displayed it on the front lawn of their Stonebridge mansion.
In 1928 the Japanese garden was cleared to make way for the Como golf course, so Fred Crosby must have donated the frog to Como Park sometime between 1923 and 1928. In 1929 the frog was placed in its current location in the Frog Pond. It is the only remaining piece of the 1904 Japanese garden, but it was hardly an original feature and at best could only have been a part of the garden for six years.
All of this assumes that each snippet of information is accurate. It’s just as likely that the frog was never a part of the Japanese garden, but was donated following the death of Elizabeth Crosby in 1928 when Fred Crosby took over the estate.
