Well, the sun put it off and put it off until we began to hope that Old Sol was going to forget about Cowtown altogether this year and spend the summer in Arizona. But today’s high temperature is forecast to hit 100 degrees for the first time in 2015. The average date of our first 100-degree temperature is June 30.
Time to cool down, if only virtually, with some fountains seen ’round town.
Probably the greatest concentration of fountains is at Botanic Garden (1929):
The south entrance to Botanic Garden is flanked by two brass lanterns that once hung on the Montgomery Ward building on West 7th Street.
and at Fort Worth Water Gardens (1974, Johnson):
Water now flows where blood and whiskey once flowed in Hell’s Half Acre.
Artist Franco Alessandrini’s panther fountain (2002) in Hyde Park (1873).
At the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame.
Earth Fountain sculpture at Byers Green on Camp Bowie Boulevard.
At Tarrant County College’s Trinity River East Campus.
Fountainheads of the horse trough (1892, reconstructed 1999) at the courthouse.
The trough, designed by Marshall Sanguinet, replaced an earlier trough at the courthouse.
The water trough was donated by the Woman’s Humane Society, as was the 1893 Al Hayne memorial, which has long since ceased to function as fountain or trough. The society donated two more horse troughs: one just north of St. Patrick Cathedral and another on North Main. Clips are from 1892 and 1893.
Evans Avenue Plaza.
Trinity Park duck pond.
Laurel Land Memorial Park.
The basin of this fountain behind the building at 400 Main Street, former Fort Worth headquarters of Northern Texas Traction Company, evokes the cowrinthian capitals atop the columns (bottom photo) of the main post office.
These fountains at Greenwood Cemetery have their own sprinkler to keep them cool.
Belly Up to the Fortress Fountain
These two fountains are dry, but they deserve a mention for their nostalgia value. These fountains made of concrete and iron may look like turrets along France’s Maginot Line during World War II, but they are school yard water fountains.
When did you last wet your whistle at one of these while impatient classmates in line behind you fidgeted and implored you to hurry up? Maybe when Fess Parker was “king of the wild frontier”? Maybe when the Beatles were “here, there, and everywhere”? Or maybe when Sean Connery was “Bond, James Bond”?
This fountain is at Stephen F. Austin Elementary School (1892, Messer, Sanguinet, and Messer) on Lipscomb Street, now corporate headquarters of Williamson-Dickie.
And this fountain is in the yard of a school built in 1909 by the Arlington Heights Independent School District just off Camp Bowie Boulevard. The building is now part of the Boulevard Heights Transition Center.
When you think about it, these school yard fountains had to be fortified. After all, they had to withstand a force almost as formidable as the Wehrmacht: fifth-graders.
