The monument is a tribute to Thomas A. Hendricks (September 7, 1819 – November 25, 1885), the 21st Vice President of the United States (serving with Grover Cleveland).

[3] Later, as funds for the monument increased, Park was commissioned to add two seated allegorical statues in bronze representing "History" and "Enlightenment"; the granite pedestal was enlarged and modified to receive the new features.

[8] Thomas A. Hendricks (7 September 1819 – 25 November 1885), an Indiana lawyer and nineteenth-century politician, was active in the Democratic Party at the state and national levels.

Hendricks served the last eight months of his life in the President Grover Cleveland administration as the twenty-first vice-president of the United States (1885).

[12] A group of Indianapolis citizens met on December 10, 1885, and appointed a five-member committee to prepare a plan of organization and articles of incorporation for an association to oversee the project.

At a public meeting on December 12, 1885, incorporating articles were approved to authorize the association to erect a monument to Hendricks; a twelve-member committee was selected to manage the group's business affairs.

[15] The monument association had legislative permission to select a site and chose the southeast corner of the Indiana Statehouse grounds at Indianapolis.

Special invitations were sent to President Benjamin Harrison and ex-President Grover Cleveland and their cabinets, senators and congressmen, federal judges, and governors of other states.

[20] The ceremonies began with a parade, followed by a program of activities: a call to order by Alvin P. Hovey, governor of Indiana; an invocation by Rev.

Joseph S. Jenckes, of St. Paul’s Church, Indianapolis; music; a historical statement by Frederick Rand, president of the monument association; unveiling of the monument by Eliza C. Hendricks; a nine-round salute from Indianapolis Light Artillery; a dedicatory poem by James Whitcomb Riley of Indiana, read by Rev.

Dr. D. W. Fisher, president of Hanover College; and address by David Turpie, U. S. Senator from Indiana; and a benediction from Reverend Francis Silas Chatard, Bishop of Vincennes.

[21] New York sculptor Richard Henry Park (1832–1902) designed the monument’s heroic bronze sculpture of Hendricks and the two allegorical figures flanking the pedestal.