Court Square Fountain

The Court Square Fountain, in the Court Square-Dexter Avenue Historic District of Montgomery, Alabama, was established in 1885 on top of an artesian well, which native Alabamians used long before the area was settled. The fountain contains statues based on Greek mythology. The surrounding area, once the location for Montgomery's bustling slave trade, has seen most of its historical buildings torn down; the fountain's statues were replaced with aluminum ones in the 1980s.

Court Square Fountain
Year1885
MediumCast iron
Dimensions (25 feet in)
LocationMontgomery, Alabama
Coordinates32°22′38″N 86°18′33″W

Location, history

The fountain was built on top of an artesian well, a watering hole already for the native Alabamians long before the coming of whites.[1] By June 1853 the well was 475 feet deep and flowed at two gallons per minute.[2] The location is also the place where two communities, Alabama Town and New Philadelphia, had grown together to form what would be called Montgomery.[3] Later, the area was the central location of the Montgomery slave trade.[4]

Description

The fountain was long believed to have been the work of Frederick MacMonnies; the director of the Alabama Archives and History in 1935 asked him if it was his design, and he denied.[5]

On top of the fountain is a statue of Hebe, the Greek goddess of eternal youth.[6] The fountain itself is made of cast iron. The statues came from a catalog of zinc iron statues: on top, a "Canova's Hebe", one layer down four "Seated Boys" holding towels, one layer down four "Narcissus" figures, and at the bottom a "Stem Bitterns", "a group of three free-standing birds around the base stem of a cast-iron fountain". All these statues were replaced in 1984 by aluminum versions; those, however, were corroded by chlorine in the water only twenty years later.[7]

The historical buildings around the fountain, which was known as the "romantic center" of the city, have mostly been demolished, one entire block of them in the 1960s to make way for a Pizitz department store, which opened in 1972.[6] Across from the fountain on Court Square is the Winter Building, whence the telegram giving the order to fire on Fort Sumter was given.[8] Also across from the fountain, is the bus stop that Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat thus starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a crucial part in the early Civil Right Movement. Rosa Parks refused her seat not at Court Sq. but further up the street where the Empire Theater was. Section 486 of the Montgomery City Ordinance (1888 version) forbids the interfering with fish and fowl in the basin of the statue, or the disposing of liquids or solids in it; violators could be fined $100.[9]

The sculpture of Hebe at the top of the fountain was likely modeled on a sculpture by Antonio Canova.[10][11] Nearly identical fountains can be found at Fountain Square in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Court Square in Memphis, Tennessee, all cast by J.L. Mott Ironworks of New York.[10][11]

In art

Montgomery-born painter Anne Goldthwaite depicted the fountain with a cotton wagon running along in front of it in her painting Bringing Cotton Bails to Market.[12] Zelda Fitzgerald played here as a child,[13] and poet Andrew Hudgins located one of the poems in A Clown at Midnight (2013) at the fountain.[14]

See also

References
  1. Windham, Kathryn Tucker (2007). Alabama, One Big Front Porch. NewSouth Books. p. 28. ISBN 9781588382191.
  2. Blue, Matthew Powers; Neeley, Mary Ann (2010). The Works of Matthew Blue: Montgomery's First Historian. NewSouth Books. p. 208. ISBN 9781588380319.
  3. Williams, Donnie; Greenhaw, Wayne (2007). The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow. Chicago Review Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN 9781556526763.
  4. Graetz, Robert S. (2011). A White Preacher's Message on Race and Reconciliation: Based on His Experiences Beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. NewSouth Books. p. 44. ISBN 9781603060691.
  5. Mertins, Ellen (October 5, 2014). "Court Square Fountain known by many names". Montgomery Advertiser. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  6. Pell, Karren; King, Carole (2015). Montgomery. Arcadia. pp. 8, 18, 19, 29, 73. ISBN 9781439651445. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  7. Grissom, Carol A. (2009). Zinc Sculpture in America, 1850–1950. Associated University Presse. pp. 287, 302, 382, 383, 395. ISBN 9780874130317.
  8. Serafin, Faith (2013). Haunted Montgomery, Alabama. The History Press. p. 56. ISBN 9781609499303.
  9. Thorington, William S. (1888). The Code of Ordinances of the City Council of Montgomery: With the Charter and Captions of All Acts of the General Assembly of Alabama Affecting the Charter of the City of Montgomery. Brown Print. Company. p. 220.
  10. Jeffrey, Jonathan. "Fountain Square Park History". City of Bowling Green, KY. City of Bowling Green, KY. Retrieved October 30, 2016. The new piece was crowned by Antonio Canova's ... Hebe, the goddess of youth. ... Near identical fountains are located in Memphis, Tennessee's Court Square and in Montgomery, Alabama.
  11. Dodd, Tom. "Hebe fountain(s) found (but not in Ypsilanti)". Ypsilanti Gleanings. Retrieved October 30, 2016. At Bowling Green, Kentucky, the Hebe fountain in Fountain Square follows Canova's model ... purchased in 1881 from the J.L. Mott Iron Works of New York, at a cost of $1,500. Similar fountains, likely all sold by Mott, are located in Court Square, Memphis, Tennessee, and in Montgomery, Alabama.
  12. "MMFA Online Collection: Anne Goldthwaite". Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  13. Foxwell, Trish (2013). A Visitor's Guide to the Literary South. Countryman Press. p. 17. ISBN 9781581577136.
  14. Hudgins, Andrew (2013). A Clown at Midnight: Poems. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 17. ISBN 9780544105522.
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