Burnside Fountain - "Turtle Boy"

"Turtle Boy"

The statue that sits atop the Burnside Fountain is now commonly referred to as Turtle Boy. In the tradition of the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Turtle Boy has become an unofficial mascot for Worcester. Anonymous members of the Worcester community sometimes dress the statue in festive clothes for holidays, local bands write crowd-pleasing songs about it, and the statue has even graced postcards of the city. Much of the local popularity of the statue is due to bawdy insinuations about how the boy and the turtle are portrayed.

The popularity of Turtle Boy began around the time it was installed in Central Square. In 1916 the Burnside Fountain's boy and turtle appeared in The Cloud Bird, a children's book by Margaret C. Getchell in which each chapter was about a Worcester landmark. In the eighth chapter, "The Adventurer in Armor," a small girl finds a young, Peter Pan-like faun who had agreed to hold back the turtle. They later go on an adventure upon the turtle's back, but return at the end of the day. By the late 2000s "Turtle Boy" was a common term used to align events and objects with Worcester. A local music contest was named the "Turtle Boy Music Awards," and the Wormtown Brewing Company in Worcester began selling a "Turtle Boy Blueberry Ale."

Kristina Wilson, associate professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Worcester's Clark University, asked people on campus what they though of Turtle Boy. One person replied "Oh, that's Worcester's monument to bestiality." Wilson said the sculpture is intended to portray "innocence, joy, and rebirth," and that historically Charles Y. Harvey came from an artistic tradition in which "the human figure is the apex of beauty, and how well you can capture that is the demonstration of your artistic talents." Regarding the artistic merit of the work, Wilson said: "It's unfortunate, because it really does look like something untoward is going on."

Mostly because of the ambiguity in what the Burnside Fountain is depicting, Turtle Boy pops up occasionally in internet culture. In 2012 an image of the sculpture appeared on a Reddit post entitled "Wait, so you're saying your city DOESN'T have a statue of a boy b-ing a turtle!?" which received more than 275 comments. The photo, which was posted on imgur.com by user "besora", received over 500,000 views. The same image also appeared on comedian Daniel Tosh's Tosh.0 blog.