Have you wondered, while driving on N. Prospect Ave., who is that dapper man immortalized in bronze, gazing toward downtown from his perch above Knapp St.? Well, he's legendary Scots poet Robert Burns and, as far as we can tell, he never visited Milwaukee (which didn't exist in his lifetime.

So why on earth is there a statue of the man who "Auld Lang Syne" on Milwaukee's East Side?

According to "The Heritage Guidebook: Landmarks and Historical Sites in Southeastern Wisconsin" -- written by H. Russell Zimmerman, the city's prolific architect, historian and preservationist and (re)published by Schwartz Bookshop --- the Burns statue was donated to the city in 1909 by James Anderson Bryden, a Milwaukeean of Scottish descent.

A replica of a Burns monument in Kilmarnock, Scotland, sculpted by Edinburgh artist William Grant Stevenson, the statue was accepted by then-mayor David Rose, in front of a crowd of almost 2,000.

A group of men, including Bryden, Alexander Mitchell and others, hoped to celebrate their bonnie heritage by erecting a monument to their motherland's best known son, but nearly all had died without seeing the project come to fruition.

Bryden, on the other hand, made provisions in his will to have the state erected in the city, but decided he'd prefer to see it happen in his lifetime and began the process of getting the monument built.

The Burns statue is still a focal point for local poets and Scotsmen, who lay a wreath at its base each year to celebrate the birth of the great wordsmith, who entered this world on Jan. 25, 1759.