Tower Grove Park is a municipal park in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. Most of its land was donated to the city by Henry Shaw in 1868. It is on 289 acres (1.17 km²) adjacent to the Missouri Botanical Garden, another of Shaw's legacies. It extends from west to east, between Kingshighway Boulevard and Grand Boulevard. It is bordered on the north by Magnolia Avenue and on the south by Arsenal Street. Environment and facilities The park features 32 pavilions of picturesque design, most dating from the Victorian era. The landscape includes a lily pond and formal plantings; the Piper Palm House, a bandstand, the site of music and other special events; as well as tennis courts; a wading pool for small children; open expanses of green; softball diamonds and soccer fields; paths for walkers, joggers, and cyclists, and tall specimen trees and a great variety of bushes. Designed in the gardenesque style by James Gurney Sr., the park has been designated a National Historic Landmark as one of the nation's finest examples of a late 19th-century public park. Gurney had been head of the aquatic plants section at Kew Gardens in London, and he remained in St. Louis as superintendent of the park. The park is home to nearly 400 species of trees, bushes, and flowering plants. It is a well-known birdwatching area, particularly during the spring and fall bird migration seasons. It is part of the Mississippi Flyway and migrating birds rest in the park along their journey. Forty percent of North American songbirds and waterbirds use this route. Examples are many types of warblers, orioles, and Canada geese. Statues There are several statues from the 1800s along the central corridor of the park. There is a full likeness of Alexander von Humboldt, the German naturalist, geographer and explorer, and one of William Shakespeare the English playwright, both from 1878 and sculpted by German sculptor Ferdinand Freiherr von Miller. von Miller also produced a statue of the Italian navigator and explorer Christopher Columbus that was dedicated in 1886, and placed near the gates and entrance from Grand Avenue. The Christopher Columbus statue had been annually commemorated by the local Italian American community. In 2016 and 2017, the statue was vandalized with red paint and messages including "murderer" and "Black Lives Matter." Calls for the statue's removal in 2018 initiated forming a commission to make recommendations on the