Thursday, November 1, 2018

Painting around the fountain



For some reason a coat of paint for Temperance Fountain — which turned 130 this year — in Tompkins Square Park ...

Thanks to EV Resident for the photo...

5 comments:

East Village Community Member said...

This is sad. They've essentially defaced the granite of this historic monument in the park. You would think someone in the Park's Department would be regulating how they "maintain" significant cultural artifacts in our parks. They shouldn't be painting over stone monuments and fountains.

Anonymous said...

ummmm..... you dont paint over stone....

JQ LLC said...

Agree with EVCM. But this city is obviously broke so instead of properly maintaining the granite properly they are just doing a paintover.

Scuba Diva said...

Considering how many doormen and supers you see watering the walks outside their buildings, this isn't surprising at all. Besides, the Temperance Fountain may have originally been painted—probably not, but many classical sculptures were painted in natural sculptures.

East Village Community Member said...

In response to Scuba Diva, the Temperance Fountain was not painted originally. And the partial covering over of the granite base of the water fountain part of the fountain this week was clearly some type of maintenance effort gone wrong. Classical statues in Ancient Greece were often painted in "life like" colors, but granite monuments of the 19th and 20th Century would not be painted. You can see a vintage photograph of the fountain at this link: http://gvshp.org/blog/2014/08/13/tompkins-temperance/