Leicester Square one bust each of famous former residents in the square: the scientist Sir Isaac Newton designed by W. Calder Marshall; Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first President of the Royal Academy by H. Weekes; John Hunter, a pioneer of surgery, by T. Wooler; and William Hogarth, the painter, by J. Durham. Ownership transferred to Westminster City Council in 1933. The most recent addition was a bronze statue of film star and director Charlie Chaplin, designed by sculptor John Doubleday in 1981. On the pavement were inscribed the distances in miles to several Commonwealth countries, including Canada, Kenya and Jamaica. After the
Statue of William Shakespeare, Leicester Square Statue of William Shakespeare, Leicester Square A statue of William Shakespeare, sculpted by Giovanni Fontana after an original by Peter Scheemakers, has formed the centrepiece of Leicester Square Gardens in London since 1874. The marble figure, copied from Scheemakers' 18th-century monument to Shakespeare in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, stands on a pedestal flanked by dolphins at the centre of a fountain. It is the result of improvements to the gardens made by the financier Albert Grant, who bought the Square in 1874 and had it refurbished to a design by James Knowles. The scroll held by Shakespeare is inscribed with