A big fountain in a park, spouting off smartly and impressively at regular intervals, is one of humankind’s most gloriously sublime inventions.
Few in the world match Grant Park’s Buckingham Fountain for size or beauty. It is a mesmerizing force in its own right, like the pounding of an ocean surf or the roaring din of a waterfall.
Kate Buckingham, the regal dowager who had the thing built in memory of her brother, Clarence, knew perfectly well that it would put some romance in the heart of the city.
Every summer since 1927 it has provided an awesome playground for children, a place of rendezvous and seduction for lovers, a backdrop for countless weddings, an alcove in a busy metropolis for tired and contemplative spirits.
But next summer, right after the close of the Taste of Chicago festival in July, the fountain will, for all intents and purposes, be dismantled.
The years have taken their toll on the beaux-arts landmark. Its sculpted pink Georgia marble exterior is now more a rusty brown because of acid rain and oxidation. The freeze/thaw cycle of 66 Chicago winters and the spewing and gushing of 1.5 million gallons of water into its pools during 66 summers have cracked and softened its massive concrete core.
By May 1, 1995, however, it will be back, its refurbished marble skin pinned back on a brand-new, stronger and less permeable frame of concrete.
It will have new, more powerful lights, too, to compensate for the increase over the years of light cast by the rest of the city. When the $2.2 million renovation is done, the fountain’s nightly show of colored lights should once again be as bright and dazzling as Kate Buckingham intended.
“Visually, everything will look the same as it always has,” said Uriel Schlair, one of the architects overseeing the renovation. “But it will be much improved technologically.”
In fact, Schlair and his colleague at Harry Weese and Associates, architect Jerry McEvain, believe the popular summer attraction could be, with a little planning, a spectacular winter spectacle too.
“It’s something we should be thinking about,” Schlair said. “Tour operators tell us how they wish it was operating year-round, because the fountain tops the popularity lists of tourists as a favorite landmark.
“Can you imagine how spectacular it would look in the snow, with the steam rising around it? It probably could be done with a little research.”
Such an idea probably would appeal to the flamboyant, eccentric and excessively generous Miss Buckingham, who died in 1937 at age 79.
Heiress to a $4.2 million fortune, the tall, imperious woman who wore her snowy white hair in a Queen Mary pompadour disliked social snobbery, refusing to be listed in the Chicago social register.
Never married, she scorned publicity but had a hard time avoiding it because of a generous nature and her eye for fine art, which she collected and, eventually, gave away by the carload.
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Once, after having her hair done in a New York salon before boarding a ship bound for Egypt, she couldn’t resist stopping at a gallery on the way to the pier. She ended up spending a small fortune on a 9th Century Chinese Buddha from the T’ang Dynasty.
“New York is hell on me,” she ruefully said afterward in her characteristic plain-spoken way. “I can’t get through this town without spending money.”
She collected Chinese bronzes and gothic sculpture, and her beloved brother, Clarence, a bachelor who died in 1913, collected Japanese prints and works by European old masters.
She left the bulk of their amassed artwork to the Art Institute, which counts it among its three or four most valuable collections.
And her gift of the fountain to the people of the city has remained just that: a gift that has never cost the taxpayers a cent. Built for $700,000, she paid for it entirely and also provided funds to pay for its operation, maintenance and repairs in perpetuity.
Even now, the men the Chicago Park District sends over for two hours a day to maintain the fountain are paid from Buckingham funds. The funds also pay for the electricity that runs the pumps and powers the light shows, as well as the water in the pools.
Several years ago, park workers began to notice accelerated deterioration of the 25-foot-high concrete core of the fountain. The deterioration was causing the sculpted marble exterior to buckle and crack in places. Worse yet, calcified drippings forming stalactites in the fountain’s inner chambers heralded an eventual collapse of the structure.
Ed Uhlir, assistant superintendent of the Park District, which is responsible for the fountain’s maintenance, conferred with Calvert Audrain, vice president of the Art Institute, which controls the Buckingham maintenance funds.
Keeping an eye on the escalating deterioration, they allowed the funds to build up sufficient reserves to pay for a major overhaul.
Last winter they contracted Harry Weese and Associates, a firm that has recently restored a number of landmarks, including the exterior of the Field Museum of Natural History and the Intercontinental Hotel on Michigan Avenue. They also have renovated Union Station in Washington, D.C., and the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.
Schlair and McEvain spent several weeks mapping and assessing the damage to the fountain, which resembles an elaborate, giant, three-tiered wedding cake sitting in the flat, 280-foot-wide basin.
The renovation plan calls for removing the marble “icing” from the “cake” and setting it aside. The old concrete will be removed down to the pilings to make way for a new core.
Broken and cracked pieces of marble, some of which weigh several tons, will be repaired and recaulked before being reattached to the new core. The big, bronze sculpted sea animals in the basin, relatively undamaged, will nonetheless be restored as closely as possible to their original patina.
The big, bronze sculpted sea animals in the basin, relatively undamaged, will nonetheless be restored as closely as possible to their original patina.
Kate Buckingham probably would have relished the technical aspects of the restoration. She had an eye for such details herself.
Just before the fountain’s completion in the summer of 1927, at age 69, she was at the construction site every night, experimenting with the colored glass lenses projecting onto the water geysers.
She was quoted at the time as saying she wanted the lighting to achieve an effect of “soft moonlight” by blending colors that would create an “ethereal, mystical aura.”
She apparently was quite pleased with the results, attending the formal opening of the fountain on August 26, 1927.
It was a highly publicized affair, with John Philip Sousa and his marching band on hand.
Fifty-thousand Chicagoans cheered when, at dusk, the switches were thrown and the light-tinted water spurted 135 feet into the air to the tune of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”