Jacob Mould's 1871 City Hall Park Fountain

Photo wirednewyork.com

After completion of the elegant City Hall in 1812, the large triangle of land fronting it was used only partially as a public park.  The city's first art museum, a circular building called The Rotunda was built here six years later and various other structures came and went.

The opening of the Croton Aqueduct in 1842 brought the city’s water supply from upstate.  A large fountain was soon installed in City Hall Park that spewed water 50 feet in the air.  It was at or near the fountain that public gatherings concerning the outbreak of the Mexican American War in 1846 were held, where Civil War recruitment drives were administered in 1862, and where barracks housed Civil War troops waiting to march off.

After the war, in 1867, the city erected a post office on the southern tip of the park, and in 1870 razed the Rotunda.  The following year Jacob Wrey Mould was commissioned to design a new fountain.  Mould, who would become chief architect of New York City Parks, was busy at the time co-designing elements of Central Park with Calvert Vaux.

His creation replaced the 1842 fountain.  Patently Mould in design, it was a Victorian extravaganza worthy of its high profile position in front of City Hall.  A granite and bronze central column sat within a 30-foot-square granite basin, which spilled into four semi-circular pools at its sides.  Four ornate gas-lit “candelabra” anchored the corners, and a gilt finial surmounted both the column and the lamps.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The park and Mould’s fountain were enjoyed by tourists and New Yorkers alike.  Throughout the 1870s people crowded into the park for free concerts.

After World War I, however, civic taste turned from ornate Victorian designs to heroic allegorical monuments.  The Jacob  Wrey Mould fountain was disassembled in 1920 and shipped to Crotona Park in the Bronx.  Two years later a controversial fountain by Frederick William MacMonnies was installed.  The sculptural grouping, called Civic Virtue, depicted a muscular, nude male holding a sword, stepping over the prone figures of two females.  The grouping was little admired by female New Yorkers.

Amid the protests, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had the fountain dismantled and moved to Queens.  City Hall Park was without a fountain until 1972 when a new fountain, the gift of philanthropist George T. Delacorte, was installed.

During his second administration, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani became disenchanted with the rag-tag condition of City Hall Park and initiated a full-scale renovation and restoration.  In 1999 the project, which would cost nearly $35 million, was underway.  Pavement, which by now covered the park, was ripped up and grass and plantings reintroduced.  The heavy, cast iron fence was restored and elements replicated where necessary, and plans were laid for the return of the Jacob Wrey Mould fountain.

Conservations Solutions, Inc., the firm hired to restore the fountain, was faced with a daunting task.  During its years in the Bronx, the fountain's bronze elements had been stolen for their scrap value.  Where original carved capstones and copingstones had been taken or lost, blank gray stone blocks had been used as replacements.  For years, city maintenance workers had covered spray-painted graffiti with layer after layer of white paint.  

Carefully, Conservations Solutions removed the white paint and the underlying graffiti without damaging the original surviving finishes.  All missing granite, bronze and ceramic elements were reproduced using Mould’s original sketches and early photographs.  Not only were the fountain operations restored to the 1871 plans, the restored lamps burn gas again as they did during those summer concerts 140 years ago.

In 2000, the fountain restoration received the award of Best Park Restoration from the New York City Department of Parks.