Allan Appel Photo
On a warm day next spring water will flow from this lion’s mouth for the first time in decades. And you can drink it.
That’s thanks to the recently completed repair and stabilization of the 1907 Bennett Memorial Fountain at the southeast corner of the Green near Church and Chapel.
The work was done by Francis Miller and his team from ConservArt, the same restorers responsible for the the gleaming new Angel of Peace and her sculptural entourage atop East Rock’s summit.
Conservator Miller added a granite splash beneath each lion mouth.
The project cost approximately $30,000, two-thirds paid for by the Department of Parks, Trees, and Recreation, one third by the Proprietors of the Town Green.
The repair and stabilization are long overdue. Not only because deterioration is advanced. But also because the 1907 fountain, designed by John Ferguson Weir, is significant for what New Haven has become.
The model for the fountain is the Athenian monument known as the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates; the eponymous fellow is the donor, or choregos in Greek.
It was once so iconic a work of art that no less an orator than presidential aspirant William Jennings Bryan came to New Haven to dedicate it. Bryant was pals with Philo Sherman Bennett, a local grocery magnate who gave to his campaign. Bennett went off and died in Idaho in an accident. He left $10,000 to build a fountain. Now his name is barely visible in the badly weathered Vermont marble.
Most significant of all, the fountain was the first structure on the Green apart from the churches. Its use of a classical model (an Athenian monument on the hills of the Acropolis) in the service of the public health, planning, and welfare (cool drinking water) predated the City Beautiful Movement in New Haven. That resulted in the construction of the New Haven Free Public Library a few years later as well as the other Grecian-themed and columned buildings around the central Green.
Watercolor, pastel, and pencil drawing of his proposed fountain by John Ferguson Weir, from the cover of New Haven Museum bulletin, Spring, 1993.
As the cold winter wind whipped around his handiwork and Miller gave a tour of the fountain Friday, he was at pains to point out that the job was not one of restoration. It involved cleaning and stabilization of an important public art work damaged both by the tough New England weather and maintenance that could have been more scientifically informed and thoughtful.
“Marble in ancient Athens is one thing …” remarked the Urban Design League’s Anstress Farwell.
“Marble in New England suffers,” added Miller.
Scaffolding surrounded the 23-foot high sculpture since last June, Miller noted. “It was so labor intensive, I was worried people would see deterioration [when he finished] and feel the money was not well spent. And they wouldn’t understand that the goal is stabilization.”
Miller installed a secure, gray fiberglass screen at each of the doggy troughs.
No one this reporter talked to could remember when water last flowed either out of the lion’s mouth for humans, or out of the sidewalk level troughs for canines, or out of the graceful high urn surrounded by Corinthian columns.
Green Proprietor Anne Calabresi wrote in an email of the prospect of the fountain’s return: “What I love about this fountain besides its Palladian shape is that it also provided for our four-footed friends — a trough for horses and a low basin for dogs. Now that’s real community spirit not to say a high level of human spirit! “
Miller said the plumbing repairs he noticed in the below ground utility box appeared dated from the 1970s or 1980s.
Phase one involved repairing that box, which also was the holding area for large chunks of ice used to cool the water in summer in the fountain’s early years.
Miller said the city did a good job on the pipes and clearing the sewer lines.
It has not done as adequate a job over the years cleaning the marble. Miller pointed to large gouges that may have been caused by power washing and even sandblasting. Both serious no-nos.
“That would explain the severe loss of detail” like the several eggs missing from the egg-and-dart bordering the top of the base section, he said.
Miller’s task then was to repair thousands of hairline cracks in the upper part of the monument. Those were caused both by atmospheric pollution and by organic matter getting inside and dissolving the marble.
Using tiny syringes, he injected lime grout individually in each crack and then filled the larger joints and holes with the right cement compound.
“The wrong one, if it’s harder material than the parent stone, it will pulverize the marble during the freeze/thaw cycle,” he said.
Finally, Miller sprayed the stone with a consolidating agent.
Voila. He said with proper maintenance the Bennett Memorial Fountain should be good for 100 years.
“I’m giving Bob [city parks chief Levine] a full maintenance program.”
The restoration was a big success in the eyes of Diane Pietrosimone, who stands near it when her car is broken and she waits for the bus at the nearby crowded central stop.
As her son Geno played hard to catch, she said the marble looks as bright as the white-painted steeple of Center Church in the background.
“Good job,” she said to Miller.
Farwell said there was a real aesthetic about the wear. “It looks like we dug it up.”
That too was a compliment.