The popular Crown Fountain gets plenty of face time and tons of compliments. But does anyone ever stop to think about what’s going on inside those pretty 50-foot-tall heads? Many of us assume — how typical! — that they just might be empty.
Ed Uhlir, Millennium Park’s director of design, architecture and landscape, knows better.
“These are the pumps,” Uhlir says, after unlocking an unmarked gray, metal door on the parking lot level directly beneath the north tower of the fountain. The space looks like the boiler room of an old battleship, except the huge valved pipes are colored baby blue, red and pale green, and labeled Pool Supply, Trough Supply, Tower Supply and Pool Return
“This one is the one that supplies the gargoyles,” Uhlir adds, referring to a water pipe crucial to the fountain mechanism that sends water squirting out the front — where the mouths of the animated Chicagoans are — then splashing into the shallow pool below.
“You want to go up?” he asks and begins climbing up a metal ladder, dressed in a jacket and tie, before disappearing into a high-ceilinged room with three translucent glass-brick walls (11,000 glass bricks in each tower) and one wall that is opaque (the “face” wall, made of 147 densely packed, high-intensity light-emitting diode panels — containing 90,000 pixels, or points of light, that can vary in color and intensity).
“There are no real secrets here,” says Uhlir. “It’s all pretty self-explanatory. These LED units are the same kinds used on a scoreboard at Soldier Field — or a TV screen — same system.”
Follow him up the ladder, and one of the first things you see when you reach the trapdoor in the concrete ground floor is water splashing and bubbling. It’s almost always “raining” when you’re inside the Crown Fountain, but on a beautiful day, the sunlight streaming through glass creates the effect of being inside an industrial-style terrarium.
“When it’s 95 degrees out, it’s hot in here. This tower has a southern exposure. The huge fans below kick in, which creates this huge updraft of air that cools it off pretty quickly,” says Uhlir, standing near a dramatic assortment of water pipes and ductwork worming its way up from various locked rooms in the garage below, before heading off in several directions, including straight up. “It pulls air out of the garage, and it goes up to the top.”
Weatherwise, it’s also a little damp in here, but not foggy, and you’ll feel the occasional sprinkle. “It’s not waterproof,” says Uhlir, pointing out that the glass bricks are stacked with stainless steel between the layers rather than mortar.
“Those are also LEDs,” says Uhlir, pointing up toward one of the 124 synchronized lights attached to the back three glass walls, whose purpose is to make the translucent box glow in changing colors at night. The water goes all the way to the ceiling too. “There’s a reservoir up there that holds water, which is then pushed up over the sides,” he says, before leading the way up another metal ladder.
“Let’s go up to the second floor,” Uhlir says, meaning one of six levels of open steel platforms built flush to the LED wall, which are used by maintenance workers. (The screens, the water and fans are all operated from control rooms under the fountain, in the garage.)
Uhlir starts climbing up another ladder. “Watch your head — metal beams,” he says, although falling down the hole from the ladder seems like a much greater danger.
The third level probably offers the best view in the place — midway between floor and ceiling.
“Here’s the water supply for the gargoyle. This goes into the schnozzle thing. So the mouth is right here,” he says, indicating four thin pipes that sharply curve straight into the wall. After a few seconds came the sound of water rushing through the gargoyle conduit, which was — even though there was no way to see the water splashing into the pool outside, where children love to play — somehow delightful.
“Obviously,” Uhlir says, “it’s not like any other place you’ve ever been.”
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Virtual access
Wait, there’s more online!
At chicagotribune.com/access, you can take our video tour, see even more photos inside Crown Fountain, and explore our amazing video-enhanced interactive version of the graphic below.
Where do you want to go? Tell us — and we’ll try to make it happen. E-mail to ctc-tempo@tribune.com or mail us at Unauthorized Access, Tempo, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611
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