Travelogues & History
It may be an old-school fountain display, but it's still a pretty amazing exhibition of technical know-how and ambition - and, better yet, opened my eyes to the story of a man named Frederic W. Darlington who, in a colorful career, apparently installed fountains across the country in the last years of the 19th Century and into the early years of the 20th. Most of these pioneering watershapes are gone now, but one is
& William Drakeley The years after the Second World War were times of opportunity and awkwardness in the shotcrete business. From 1920 until the early 1950s, the Cement Gun Co. owned the trademark to "gunite" and established an aggressive licensing/franchising system to maintain as much control as it could over the process and profit from it to the greatest possible degree. By 1952, however - and apparently with
by jim mccloskey
No matter whether it's for business or pleasure, I'm always open to the history of a place when I travel: It helps me put what I'm seeing in context and enriches my understanding of how things have come to be - and why they endure. In trips to Europe, for example, you often come across small, nondescript public fountains, usually in the oldest parts of cities from London to Paris to Rome. In several cases, my curiosity about them has led me to do a bit of research.
As it turns out, most of these modest fountains were set up originally to supply the general populace with fresh, safe water for drinking, cooking, bathing and many other uses besides. And some of them date back 2,000 years and more to the Roman era, when water systems and aqueducts were built throughout the empire and hydraulic engineers used head pressure and gravity to keep Rome's far-flung outposts going.
Some are little more than spouts dribbling out of wall sconces or from plain, blocky structures in public squares - and on several levels I find myself preferring them to the gaudier expressions of watershaping that garner far more attention, including Rome's Trevi Fountain, the Fountains of Versailles outside Paris and countless other water displays that are more about decoration (or ostentation) than they are about functionality.
Among my favorite examples on the purely functional end of the spectrum is the one seen in the accompanying photographs: It is Il Facchino ("The Porter"), a tiny wall fountain I saw on the Via Corso in Rome many years ago. Sculpted around 1580 (apparently by the artist Jacopo del Conte, although some have claimed it is actually the work of Michelangelo, which would really be something special), it was set up as an outlet for a restored Roman aqueduct that had been inoperable for centuries before various Popes started investing in Rome's infrastructure. (The fountain was moved a short distance to its current location on a palace wall in 1874.)
In the period before the aqueducts were returned to service, it had been the job of porters such as this nose-free fellow to fetch and deliver water from the Tiber River to Rome's citizenry, making the sculpture's purpose a neatly ironic statement on what was becoming an outmoded job description. But what is really cool about this fountain - beyond its imperial roots, Michelangelo possibilities and the wicked irony - is the fact that this is one of five of Rome's so-called pasquinades, or "talking statues."
It seems that witty citizens of Renaissance Rome once poked fun at the city's administrators or commented satirically on affairs of the day by posting placards or pamphlets on or around these five fountains and, for whatever reason, only these five fountains. Copies of the lampoons would be made and the information disseminated widely - a sort of 16th-century version of The Onion combined with Facebook.
This is why I so enjoy doing my homework on watershapes such as Il Facchino: It's cool enough that this fountain was a key public utility in what was then (as now) one of the world's most populous cities, but to think of it being a billboard for blasphemies great and small makes it even more appealing.
Perhaps this history explains why the poor porter is so unfortunately absent his nose?
I had a friend many years ago who tried in vain to persuade me to visit Detroit. She'd grown up there, and despite the city's many problems, she still harbored the born-and-raised view that her home town had so many virtues that simply seeing the place would be enough to win me over.
I never made the expansive sightseeing trip she'd always urged me to take - no time for that! But as it turned out, I did manage a short visit not long ago when my flight back from Canada and through Detroit was late enough that I missed my connection to Los Angeles. Making matters worse, it was a weather-related problem and I was far from alone in needing to find both accommodations for the night and another way home.
Long story short, I stayed the night in a downtown hotel, and the earliest flight I could book the next day was late in the afternoon. I'd wanted to see Isamu Noguchi's famous Horace E. Dodge & Son Memorial Fountain for a long time, and this was my opportunity: I had breakfast and ventured forth.
Nothing worked out on that gray, miserable January day: The weather was horrid, the hotel wasn't convenient to the riverfront plaza where the fountain stands so imposingly, and, topping things off, the whole plaza had been rendered inactive by vandals who had raided its maintenance facilities to scrounge the copper plumbing. So the fountain was as dry as a wet, near-freezing day would let it be and my whole accidental visit was a colossal bust.
As a sculpture, however, Noguchi's 1978 tribute to the industrial prowess embodied by one of auto manufacturing's leading families is vastly impressive. It's sometimes said that it looks like a gigantic wingnut, but the comparison is unkind and serves, unfairly I think, to undermine the composition's dignity, grandeur and symbolic strength. And it does stand 30 feet tall, with its fountain basin surrounded by an eight-foot-tall, granite-ringed structure that conceals the nozzles and lends an air of mystery to the fountain works.
Apparently there's also a choreographed light display that animates the fountain's surface after dark - again, not something I saw on my visit but which looks awesome in photographs (and in the brief video linked here).
All is not sad or lost: I was happy to learn in rounding up images to accompany this text that the fountain is operational again and has had its lighting system upgraded with modern LED and sequencing technology. But I have still only seen the functioning plaza and its various features in photographs: What I recall most is a chill wind so penetrating and miserable that I wondered why I'd ever left the airport.
Better luck next time?
I've been to New York often through the years, mostly on business trips that have only rarely afforded me opportunities to get out and take in the sights. But on one occasion many years ago, I managed to shake out several extra days and spent my time experiencing as much of Manhattan as I could.
I ranged from Battery Park on the island's southernmost tip of the island up to The Cloisters on its northern reaches and managed to spend a whole, glorious early-fall day in Central Park. It was there, near the upper edge of Frederick Law Olmstead's masterpiece of urban space-making, that I came across a marvelous little fountain that's well worth a few extra steps the next time your travels take you to the Big Apple.
The fountain I'm referring to wasn't here originally. For many years, it had graced the Yonkers, N.Y., estate of Samuel Untermyer, who passed away in 1940. He was a New York lawyer and prominent civic leader, and when his children donated the fountain to the park, the monuments committee placed it by 1947 in an estimable space in the Conservatory Garden.
This is the original fountain. To see it, you need to travel all the way to Mecklenburg, Germany.
The fountain's sculpture, "Three Dancing Maidens" by the German artist Walter Schott, isn't exactly "original" either: It's one of a set of replicas cast in Berlin at some point after the artist finished his work around 1910. Schott was a favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm and spent a lot of time doing monumental portrait busts and conventionally grand statues of historical figures, but he was capable of working with far greater subtlety and expressiveness - these fair and flowing maidens being a case in point.
The fountain freezes from time to time, as seen in this photograph taken in 2008. The frozen drapery adds a special touch to the composition.
I haven't seen the Untermyer Fountain in more than 30 years, but it came quickly back to mind when I saw it among a photo survey of New York fountains frozen by wintertime cold snaps. As you may recall, I'm an avid fan of frozen fountains and waterfalls; I've always supposed it has something to do with the fact that my family escaped the Frost Belt when I was very young -- but I still have early (and happy) memories of icicles draping everything in sight.
You don't have to withstand frosty weather to appreciate the Untermyer Fountain: I saw it on a warm October day, and I have to say there's no better place to be than New York (and Central Park!) at that time of year.
By Jim McCloskey
I've been to New York many times through the years, mostly on business trips that have only rarely afforded me opportunities to get out and about and take in the sights. But on one occasion many years ago, I managed to shake out several extra days and spent my time experiencing as much of Manhattan as I could.
I covered the run from the southernmost tip of the island up to The Cloisters on its northern reaches and managed to spend the full length of one glorious early-fall day in Central Park. It was there, near the top edge of Frederick Law Olmstead's masterpiece of urban space-making, that I came across a marvelous little fountain that's well worth a few extra steps the next time your travels take you to the Big Apple.
The fountain I'm referring to wasn't here originally. For many years, it had graced the Yonkers, N.Y., estate of Samuel Untermyer, who passed away in 1940. He was a New York lawyer and prominent civic leader, and when his children donated the fountain to the park, the monuments committee placed it by 1947 in an estimable space in the Conservatory Garden.
The fountain's sculpture, "Three Dancing Maidens" by the German artist Walter Schott, isn't exactly "original" either: It's one of a set of replicas cast in Berlin at some point after the artist finished his work around 1910. Schott was a favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm and spent a lot of time doing monumental portrait busts and conventionally grand statues of historical figures, but he was capable of working with far greater subtlety and expressiveness - these fair and flowing maidens being a case in point.
I haven't seen the Untermyer Fountain in more than 30 years, but it came quickly back to mind when I saw it among a photo survey of New York fountains frozen by wintertime cold snaps. As you may recall, I'm an avid fan of frozen fountains and waterfalls; I've always supposed it has something to do with the fact that my family escaped the Frost Belt when I was less than four years old and I have early (and happy) memories of icicles draping everything in sight.
But you don't have to withstand frosty weather to appreciate the Untermyer Fountain: I saw it on a warm October day, and I have to say there's no better place to be than New York (and Central Park!) at that time of year.
dry
© Victorianl | Dreamstime.com
Original fountain in Mecklenburg, Germany
Photo by Doris Antony, Berlin | Wikipedia
Frozen in 2008
Photo by Ralph Hockens, New York | Wikipedia
As though it werent apparent by now, when i travel, look for watershapes.< p >
It' s been a professional practice of mine since 1986, when i started working at pool & spa news, but it was established as personal habit long before then. even child (and my parents could attest if they were still with us), drawn to water wherever went
This means I've seen and studied lots of fountains through the years. It also means that I pay lots of attention when I run into an unconventional one, as was certainly the case with the Tanner Fountain on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. When I saw its arrangement of stones and the wonderful way it uses mist to make the space mysterious yet strangely inviting, I was hooked.
Designed by landscape architect Peter Walker in collaboration with sculptor Joan Brigham and fountain expert Richard Chaix, the watershape sits along a busy pedestrian thoroughfare near Harvard Yard. An early and perhaps even the first example of the "Landscape as Art" movement that started at Harvard around the time the fountain was installed in 1984, the composition consists of concentric rings of granite boulders looping around 32 jets located near the center. The jets produce water sprays and a dense mist that envelops the stones like a cloud.
When I first saw the Tanner Fountain, I was immediately reminded of the inverted fountain on the UCLA campus, which I wrote about in a travelogue back in June 2013 (click here). But where the effect of the UCLA fountain was to inspire mirth (at least to my somewhat twisty mind), the Tanner Fountain simply inspires, especially on days when the air is still and the mist has its way with the space.
The video linked below shows the layout of the stones and how their placement invites observers to come close, pass within the rings and approach the source of the mist. My big regret is that I missed seeing the space covered in snow - a phenomenon that puts a completely different spin on the composition. But I still count myself lucky: I saw it on a warm late-summer day when the cooling mist was unusually welcome.
In short, I love this fountain. The next time you're in the area, stop on by - and please give yourself enough time to observe the space at your leisure, especially taking in the way people (especially children, if any are around) interact with the mist: It's a treat on more levels than I can count.
To see a brief, wonderfully informative (if deadpan) video showing the various moods and seasons of Tanner Fountain, click here.
Whenever I visit the area with any time to myself, I enjoy visiting the Art Institute of Chicago. Not only does the museum host a collection of artwork expansive enough to include Renaissance masters as well as cutting-edge Modernists, but it also has what may be the best museum shop I've ever encountered.
It'd be well worth the visit even if it didn't also have a wonderful waterfeature - the Fountain of the Great Lakes - on its west side.
I'm a sucker for fountains that make me think not only about how they work but also what they mean, and in this case the interpretation of the way the Great Lakes flow and interrelate leads to a few moments of interested reflection. It's not exactly literal, nor is it very complicated: It's just a charming an allegorical representation of five vast, interconnected lakes that contain more than a fifth of the world's fresh water.
I find it amusing that the fountain was controversial in its day. Some were upset because the imagery wasn't quite literal enough. Sure, if you're visualizing a map of the lakes it's a bit difficult to read the relationships of the five figures as a clear representation of the system, but that seems trivial.
And then there were objections because there's a certain amount of metallic breast on display; that, too, seems trivial in such a classical set of forms. (You have to wonder if, back in 1913, those same prudes ran around putting their version of sticky-notes all over any Rubens painting the museum might have been fortunate enough to acquire or borrow.)
Personally, my only complaint is that the fountain isn't where it was originally placed: In 1963, it was moved from a venue of much greater prominence to its current spot adjacent to what was then a new wing that had been added to the museum complex. The positioning isn't terrible, but I don't like the reflecting pool/fountain that now shoots jets of water up into the space: The big sculpture works better on its own!
As defects go, however, that's an easy one to ignore. So when you visit the Art Institute and its great museum shop, take a few extra steps and visit a wonderful fountain that tells a nice little story about the region and its heritage.
As a garden designer, I've often heard about wonderful English gardens, historic British designers and specific design styles that have radiated from England through the years. I've studied books, seen wonderful profiles in magazines and searched the web for photographs and descriptions, but in recent years, the modern miracles of frequent-flier miles and house swapping have enabled me to experience these truly marvelous gardens for myself. My family and I, in fact, have visited England ten times since our first trip there in 1999. Each trip has given me the opportunity to visit amazing and inspiring gardens in different areas of the country - an education in design that I have fully integrated into my garden-design practice with Blue Hill Design in northern California. For their part, the English people are very welcoming - and especially, it seems, to gardeners: Gardening hosts on television are major celebrities, garden shows draw enormous crowds in a country where everyone
I came out of college as a full-fledged art-and-architecture geek: By the time I was through, I'd taken more than my share of classes in very dark rooms. When I set out on my self-directed tour of Europe about ten months after graduating, I knew there were countless places I wanted to see with my own eyes
Our early-summer trip to Yellowstone National Park was a revelation to me, pure and simple. As I related in my Travelogue for July 22 (click here), the thing that occurred to me is that the inspiration at Yellowstone comes less from
