Burnside Fountain - History

History

When Burnside bequeathed the money for the fountain, she asked that it be designed for use as a drinking trough for horses and also for dogs. The commission was originally intended for Daniel Chester French, but, according to a paper by Zelotes W. Coombs, French turned down the commission due to "pressure of other engagements, however... he did supervise the work." French assigned the design of the basin to Henry Bacon, who would later work with French on the Lincoln Memorial. The sculpture was assigned to Charles Y. Harvey, a graduate of the American Academy in Rome, who had worked with Augustus Saint-Gaudens on the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston.

Charles Y. Harvey began work on Boy with Turtle at his studio in New York City, believing that this work was going to be his masterpiece. Almost immediately he began second guessing his design and feeling that it was inadequate. This negativity was a trait that he had shown many times in the past. Roughly a week after beginning the sculpture, Harvey began hearing voices commanding him to kill himself. A paper about restoring the sculpture written at Worcester Polytechnic Institute claims the voices he was hearing were coming from the partially carved sculpture itself. These voices set the date of Saturday January 27, 1912 for Harvey to kill himself. On that date he laid down his tools, headed to Bronx Park with two razors, and slit his own throat along the west bank of the Bronx River.

After Harvey's death, Sherry Fry, a fellow American Academy graduate, was invited to finish the work according to the original designs Harvey had laid out. Fry completed the sculpture, and it was delivered along with the basin to Worcester in 1912. There had been much discussion about where to install the fountain. Central Square, just off the Worcester Common was chosen with only slight opposition from "market gardeners who had been using the east end of the Common for their summer outdoor market." When it was installed in Central Square, There was no dedication ceremony or unveiling for the fountain. A news article on October 11, 1912 stated that Worcester Mayor Philip O’Connell, "believes it will be well to have the fountain placed in use without ceremony.” This lack of a ceremony is presumably due to Harvey's suicide and the desire to not celebrate such an act.

By 1912 the use of horse and buggy had fallen out of fashion, and the Burnside Fountain saw little use in its intended purpose. By 1939 citizens of Worcester were already calling for the fountain to be moved to a more suitable place where it could be of more use. It took until 1969 for the Burnside Fountain to be moved from Central Square. It was relocated to the Worcester Common and turned to face Salem Square. One year later, in May 1970, the statue was ripped from its pedestal and stolen. It was returned later that same year, but it took until 1972 for the boy and turtle to be placed back on top of the basin. Another apparent theft attempt happened in 2004 when the bronze sculpture was toppled off its pedestal and left dangling off the basin. The city was quick to fix the statue this time, with it being righted and reattached within days.

In 2010 the Burnside Fountain was named one of WAAF's "Hill-Man's 25 Greatest Places in Massachusetts." That same year, it was also nominated for "Worst Public Art in New England" by a regional Art blog. Around this same time a small group of volunteers began the "Turtle Boy Urban Gardeners," a group dedicated to keeping the plantings around the Burnside Fountain presentable.

For the last few decades the Burnside Fountain has been in disrepair. A 1986 inventory of public memorials in Worcester, compiled by the municipal parks and recreation department, listed the fountains problems as "chipped stone, water system, bronze surface corrosion, rust staining, litter," and the Smithsonian Art Inventories Catalog surveyed the fountain in September 1994 and listed its condition as "treatment urgent." With the one-hundredth anniversary of the Burnside Fountain coming in 2012, there has been renewed interest in restoring the fountain. Restoration estimates run between USD $40,000 to $60,000, which is more than the city is willing to spend. Probably because of this, there are no official plans to restore the fountain, as of June 2012.