A plan to install a prototype fountain in a Chicago park near North Michigan Avenue has gone down the drain, abandoned after officials realized that the fountain was too big for its setting and that passersby would be unable to see water in its bowls.
Designed by the city’s Department of Transportation, the 13-foot-tall fountain was to have been installed in August in small, triangle-shaped Mariano Park at State and Rush streets. A pool encircling its pedestal was to be 18 feet in diameter.
Instead, a smaller fountain–its exact size and design still to be determined–will go in the park next year, replacing a small, circular fountain already there.
“You’ll have to be able to see the water, and it can’t be as wide as a bus,” quipped Terry Teele, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley, who originally had backed the fountain but then decided it wasn’t appropriate for Mariano Park.
The decision marks the second time this year the Daley administration has backed off a plan to adorn Chicago’s public spaces. In June, the mayor quashed a proposal for a 75-foot-tall ornamental pylon at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive on grounds that it threatened to block views and cheapen the dignity of the Michigan Avenue bridge district with perforated metal banners.
While that project is dead, other prototype fountains will be built. Sites for the first two will be announced later this month or in October, Teele said. The fountains are expected to be placed along the city’s historic boulevards, where their size is considered more appropriate.
The idea behind the fountains is to soften the hard edges of the city with a design economical and easy to maintain. A basic model, 13 feet high, costs $100,000, while a more elaborate model, the same height but with the 18-foot-wide basin at the bottom, is priced at $125,000. Community groups are expected to pick up the tab.
Each type of fountain will have two bowls, their rims respectively 8 and 11 feet high. Only water spilling down from the fountainhead, and from one bowl to another, will be visible at ground level.
Responding to criticism that a one-size-fits-all fountain would ignore the diversity of the neighborhoods, Teele said that a third prototype, smaller in height and bulk than the two 13-foot models, will be designed for more intimate public spaces, like Mariano Park.
In addition, he said, the color and decoration of all the fountains will be varied to help them blend in with their surroundings. The original prototype was to be made of brownish-gold precast concrete with squares and stripes of blue tile.
Daley’s city-softening strategy, which has resulted in planting flowers and trees around Chicago, has proved enormously popular but is not without detractors. At a recent symposium at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Columbia University architecture historian Kenneth Frampton called it “the Martha Stewart-ization of Chicago.”
