LocationThe Paseo & E. 12th St., in the south wall of The Terrace |
|
Artist/Designer: John Van Brunt
Installed: 1922
Description
This is a bas relief memorial fountain which is embedded in a curved, Dakota limestone wall 19 feet high and 80 feet long. Steps on both sides of the wall lead to a grass deck.
Carved pilasters with Corinthian capitals frame a memorial plaque at the base of which is a bronze lion’s head and a carved limestone basin. Egg and dart detail over dentils surround a semi-circular pediment and cap a garland carved entablature.
There is a bronze eagle in the center of the pediment. Beneath the entablature is a bronze caudecus approx. 2 feet high and 2 feet wide. Beneath the inscription are a bronze lion’s head and a carved limestone basin.
Inscription
This fountain is erected in memory of William T. Fitzsimons, 1st Lieut Medical Corps U.S.A. killed in France, September Seventh, Nineteen Hundred Seventeen. The first American officer to give his life in the Great World War for liberty/Anno Domini MCMXII
Nearly 200 hundred years after the area’s first fur trading post was settled on the bluffs of the Missouri River, Kansas City is preparing to honor the French pioneer Francois Chouteau who established it, and the Native Americans with whom he traded. Francois Chouteau...
continue reading
