The Equatorial Sundial was commissioned by Crown Hill in 1985, fabricated at Woolery Stone Company in Bloomington, Indiana in 1986 and 1987, and completed on site in 1987 by designer and sculptor David L. Rodgers. At the time, it was declared Indiana’s largest equatorial sundial. “We wanted to build something that would catch the interest of the public,” explained Stewart D. Tompkins, then executive vice president of Crown Hill Cemetery. “We also wanted the structure to be educationally stimulating.”

The sculptor incorporated several site-specific factors in his design. A dominant form in the sculpture is the circle. Its presence derives from its appearance in the late art deco style mausoleum, designed by D. H. Bohlen and Son, before which it stands.

The artist concentrates on the themes of man’s orientation in time and space and the natural order of things. By designing a sculpture that is a functional sundial, he establishes for Crown Hill Cemetery a visible relationship between human time and cosmic time. The sculpture, therefore, relates the cyclic birth, maturation and conclusion of each day to the beginning, development, and fulfillment of individual human life.

(the above text is quoted from http://crownhillhf.org/inmemoryof_sundial.html)

David L. Rodgers was a limestone sculptor based in southern Indiana, active in the 1980s and 1990s.