The Banbury Swan

Steve Bateman’s Watch Swan stands in front of Banbury Place, staring out over the Eau Claire River. An enormous guardian of the once broken.

The word “broken” can be optimistic if it is in search of healing. I like to think of it as a transient word.


Piece 1: The Tire Manufacturer
In 1917, Raymond Gillette started a rubber company in Eau Claire, which became U.S. Rubber, the city's largest employer and one of world's leading producers of automobile tires. By 1965, it was the third largest tire plant in the U.S. In 1967, U.S. Rubber changed its name to Uniroyal. In 1990, Michelin purchased the plant, and a year later, the last 1,375 employees were laid off and the plant closed.

1.9 million square foot of unused space.

Local financial institutions put together an $11.5 million loan pool to primarily finance the cost of leasing buildings by development corporations to further encourage new business activity. Banbury Place. At least 121 businesses had made a home by April 2009. There are now apartments, conference rooms, church meeting rooms, a restaurant, and a fitness center.

An enormous space, broken, then divided and unified as a beautiful community within a community.

Piece 2: The Trash Sculpture
Each year, the Minnesota DNR’s Adopt-a-River program commissions an artist, who creates an outdoor sculpture to be displayed at the Minnesota State Fair. It is made from a variety of materials gathered from actual river cleanup sites.

The 2003 sculpture was Watch Swan by Steve Bateman. “Inspired by the tundra swans of the Mississippi River flyway, this large bird calls us to stop allowing our public waters to be trashed.”

Trash, united to protect our river in Eau Claire from the fate the sculpture contains and condemns, guards our mosaic Banbury community.

Thanks to Dr. Kate Lang’s research on Eau Claire’s Wartime Women, the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Kathy Cobb’s fedgazette article, “Eau Claire responds to Uniroyal closing,” and Minnesota DNR website.
All photos are mine.