Another Lost Fountain

In the past, Gossips has written often about the original fountain in the Public Square (a.k.a. Seventh Street Park) and its statue of Venus rising from the sea. Yesterday, local historian Paul Barrett asked Gossips about another fountain he had stumbled upon while tracking down the fountain from a demolished mansion in Tarrytown: the Hudson-Fulton Memorial Fountain.

The Hudson-Fulton Memorial Fountain was a gift to the City of Hudson from the Hendrick Hudson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to commemorate the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in 1909--marking the three-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Hudson River and the one-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of steam navigation. The fountain was erected in Washington Park in front of the Columbia County courthouse (then only two years old), and on October 7, 1909, it was unveiled and dedicated, with the governor of New York, Charles Evans Hughes, taking part in the ceremony.

The fountain was created by a sculptor of considerable reputation: Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, the adopted nephew of American sculptor Henry Kirke Brown. Raised in Newburgh, Bush-Brown began studying art with his uncle and went on to attend the National Academy of Design in New York City. Among Bush-Brown's most notable works are three equestrian bronze statues at the Gettysburg battlefield and the bust of Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address Memorial in the National Cemetery at Gettysburg.

The fountain here in Hudson was described in the fourth annual report of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission to the Legislature of the State of New York, submitted in May 1910, in this way: "The fountain, which was designed by Mr. H. K. Bush-Brown, the sculptor, has a granite base 10 feet by 7 feet, a second base 6 feet by 3 feet, surmounted by a carved shaft containing bronze medallions of Hudson and Fulton, together with two granite basins, one for the use of the public and the other for small animals. It is the first public memorial erected in the City of Hudson."

The rendering of the fountain, reproduced above, appeared in the New York Tribune on October 3, 1909--three days before the fountain was unveiled and dedicated. The Tribune also published at that time a detail of the bronze medallion.

The sculptor himself was on hand for the dedication and delivered an address on "Hudson and the Hudson Memorial." Governor Hughes was reported to have praised the Daughters of the American Revolution "for their support and development of patriotic sentiment" which he said were "the real objects of this celebration."

So, what happened to this fountain, created by a significant American sculptor to commemorate a major celebration of an important historic event? Gossips hasn't discovered the whole story yet, but here's what is known so far. The fountain was never actually hooked up to a waterline and never really functioned as a fountain. At some point, it was hauled off to Hudson Monumental Works, at the corner of State and Seventh streets, and when Keeler Vault Company bought Hudson Monumental Works in 1986, one of the assets they acquired was the bottom half of the Hudson-Fulton Memorial Fountain. It is now displayed in front of the Keeler Vault building on Route 9H.

COPYRIGHT 2013 CAROLE OSTERINK