| Here Today Gone Tomorrow Nothing but a hole in the
ground
The missing fountain from Old Boro Hall park?
It's now at City Hall in Manhattan
Ronald
Gonzalez
Bronx Journal Staff Reporter
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The case
of the missing fountain began on an unusually chilly
morning in May 1999. If you had passed the center of Old
Boro Hall Park in the East Tremont section of the Bronx,
you would have seen a team of laborers moving huge, gray,
chunks of granite.
By June, all that was left was a hole in the ground.
Residents then saw what the crews had been working on:
The majestic fountain, once the centerpiece of the park
was now gone. All that was left was a temporary fence
constructed around the large gaping pit that was left.
What makes it even more mysterious is the fact that no
one in the Tremont section of the Bronx seems to know
exactly what happened or why it happened. Few want to
talk about it. "I heard they're taking it
downtown," said Richard Camacho, 44, community
resident. "We used to play baseball near it and the
smaller kids would play right on that fountain, I can't
believe it."
Unwilling to elaborate further, Ivine Galarza, district
manager of the local Community Board 6, says, "This
is a very sexy issue for us." Sam Goodman, an urban
planner for Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer's
office is more blunt. "This has brought about a
small amount of rancor," says Goodman who
specializes in parks and public spaces, and the community
and its development.
The public fountain that was located in Old Boro Hall
Park for 79 years was taken away in broad daylight and
without warning. Its new home is City Hall in Manhattan.
It was moved as part of $30 million dollar plans by The
Arsenal, the administrative office of the Department of
Parks and Recreation and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
"The fountain is being brought home to City Hall
Park in lower Manhattan," says Ed Schuyler, a press
officer for The Arsenal. "We are trying to restore
the historical character," he said, referring to the
park, "and the fountain is part of that
history."
That doesn't do much for East Tremont, however. Many
people in this low-income Black and Latino neighborhood
have fond memories of the fountain. It lended a certain
amount of class to a neighborhood characterized by its
diverse residential spaces, including numerous five-story
apartment buildings, housing projects, and pockets of new
pseudo-suburban and old, weathered private homes.
Needless to say, the decision to run off with the
fountain doesn't sit well with Bronx residents even a
year later. Geneva Dear, 72, a former community board
member, has been approached by her neighbors at the
Tremont Senior Citizen Center with one question: Where's
our fountain? "I'm an old timer," referring to
the 30 years she has lived in the East Tremont community
near the park. "The Bronx is being robbed of all its
assets and nothing of value is put back into it."
Dear says over the years the Bronx has lost a lot of its
grandeur, namely its architecture and public spaces
East Tremont's a bustling place, and residents say that
made it easy to make off with the fountain. In and around
the neighborhood, there's an interesting mix of
businesses including corner bodegas and dollar stores and
the more established chains such as McDonald's and Rite
Aid. People are scurrying about getting kids to school,
commuting to work or off to their appointments in the
Bergen Building.. Amidst all this early morning movement,
the laborers went unnoticed, since they were camouflaged
by surrounding trees, and no one had the time to ask what
they were doing.
Locals say it was a shame that the fountain was carted
off, if only because it was a symbol of the neighborhood
and of Crotona Park. The old fountain was located in a
section of the park that was once the original site of
Bronx Borough Hall. The municipal building there was
built in 1872, but demolished in 1968. Its majestic
staircase and balcony overlooking Third Avenue still
stand. As for the fountain, the only sign that it was
ever in Crotona can be found on street signs directly
across from its former location - on La Fontaine Avenue.
Jonathan Kuhn, a historian for The Arsenal, says the
fountain was actually the second one to be located in
City Hall Park. The first, known as the Croton fountain,
was originally designed for City Hall Park in 1842 to
commemorate the opening of the Croton Aqueduct. The water
that jetted out of the fountain originated in the Croton
Dam 40 miles north of the city. The 25 page booklet
titled, "City Hall Park - New York's Historic
Commons", developed and written especially for the
reopening of City Hall Park, notes that in 1870 the
Croton fountain was removed to make room for the
construction of a post office building (later torn down
in 1939). In 1871, an ornate granite fountain designed by
the noted park architect Jacob Wrey Mould was placed in
front of City Hall. With its broad, multi-colored granite
basin and ornate bronze candelabras, the Mould Fountain
quickly became the centerpiece of the now smaller City
Hall Park. In 1920, the fountain was taken down and
shipped to Crotona Park in the Bronx, where it remained
in obscurity until City Hall Park's renovation in 1999.
"It must've been a trend of the city
government," says Lloyd Ultan, Bronx Historian and
Professor who notes that fountain switching was quite in
vogue early in the twentieth century. The Croton
fountain, it turns out, was also moved - to Queens, says Ultan. During its 79-year stay in the Bronx, the Old Boro
Hall Park fountain lost its original splendor to neglect
by the local government and vandalism by graffiti
artists.
While the mayor promised to, "transmit our city far
greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to
us," during his second inauguration, neither Old
Boro Hall Park, nor the Bronx were included in that plan.
City planner Goodman adds that this issue demonstrates
many things including the lack of aesthetic sensitivity.
"When people are concerned with daily issues like
juggling childcare and earning a living sometimes the
larger issues become blurred," he says. "There
is no constituency to hold people accountable," he
adds, continuing, "I don't believe the fountain was
moved with the intention of bringing it back."
Goodman says the city hopes to appease the community and
borough by replacing the fountain with one originally
from Orchard Beach, currently in storage.
The City Hall restoration project, under the direction of
Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington began in the spring of 1999,
and culminated in a grand re-opening in October of 1999.
It seems that few if any residents from East Tremont made
it to the event. " I used to see that fountain
everyday of my forty-plus years living here," says
Camacho. "Then poof - it was gone, not even a
word."
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