In the ’60s, water was where it was at — and New York City teens like Michele Bogart gravitated to splashy spots like Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain. “There was a whole scene then,” recalls Bogart, now 61 and author of the upcoming “Revitalizing Civic Culture: New York City Public Sculpture, 1950-1995.” She says the Parks Department has restored many fountains, making them gathering places once more. This is her Fountain New York.
Pulitzer Fountain, Grand Army Plaza, Fifth Avenue, between 58th and 59th streets
“Joseph Pulitzer put in his will that he wanted a fountain. Carrère and Hastings, [the firm that] designed the New York Public Library at 42nd Street, designed the fountain and the plaza. The sculptor was Karl Bitter, who never lived to see it — he was hit by a car that jumped the curb as he and his wife were leaving the [old] Metropolitan Opera House. The female figure at the top of the fountain is Pomona, the figure of abundance — she symbolizes the commercial abundance of the city of New York, and the generosity of Joseph Pulitzer.”
The Hooper fountain, 155th Street and Edgecombe Avenue, Harlem
“In the late 1890s, hundreds of fountains were commissioned by the ASPCA ‘for man and beast’ — in this case, horses and dogs and maybe cats, too. They were often simple columns with basins — some looked like upright bathtubs, others like urinals. Another animal drinking fountain was erected in memory of boxer George Dixon, an African-Canadian featherweight champion. It was in the West Village.”
The Prosperity Fountain at Paley Park, 53rd Street, between Madison and Fifth avenues
“Paley Park may have been the city’s first vest-pocket park: a privately owned public space designed as an outdoor room. It’s essentially a 20-foot-high, 40-foot-long waterfall with chairs around it, on the site of what used to be the Stork Club. It’s a very peaceful enclave, unlike the Bethesda or Washington Square fountains. [Landscape artist] Robert Lewis Zion designed it in the 1960s, so it’s abstract — there are no nudes or classical figures.”
Maine Memorial, 59th Street at Columbus Circle
“The basin is an extension of the memorial to the men who died on the battleship Maine, which exploded before the Spanish-American war. William Randolph Hearst called upon Americans to donate funds for a memorial — originally, he called for it to be put near Staten Island, then near 47th Street. When I was growing up, [it] was graffiti-ed up. Now people sit there, because it offers that nice cooling effect.”
Civic Virtue, Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn
“ ‘Civic Virtue’ is a rendering of a masculine figure — Civic Virtue — standing astride two feminized figures with serpent-like tails: Civic Vice. In 1941, it was moved from City Hall to Queens Boulevard, where [over the years] borough presidents Claire Shulman, Helen Marshall and Melinda Katz saw it as an affront to women. In 2011, Anthony Weiner gave a press conference there and argued it was sexist — this was while he was sexting on Twitter.”