Fountain of Energy

Anyone entering by the main gate met the Fountain of Energy head-on. It stood in the center of the South Gardens on the axis of the Tower of Jewels, and its job was to announce the reason for the fair. The Official Guide calls it 'a joyous aquatic triumph, celebrating the completion of the Panama Canal.' A lean horseman, 'Energy, the Lord of the Isthmian Way,' rode a snorting horse on top of an Earth sphere, with small trumpeting figures of Fame and Valor perched on his shoulders. Todd compared his seat to Verrocchio's Colleoni.

Below him a frieze of mermen and mermaids carried the sphere, with writhing figures climbing toward the horse's feet. Breaking out of the sphere were the two Hemispheres, the Eastern 'a human tiger-cat,' the Western 'a man-bull.' In the big quatrefoil pool, groups at the cardinal points personified the Atlantic and Pacific and the Northern and Southern Seas, riding sea monsters, and nereids frolicked on 'some perfectly willing fish.' When it ran, jets burst from the top of the sphere and swept far out toward the rim.

Critics were split. Barry's architect-companion called it 'an ideal example of what is expositional,' sensational and full of 'a nervous liveliness, characteristically American, not altogether healthy,' and thought Fame and Valor did not read from a distance. Todd conceded they 'may have been a misfortune' pictorially, but concluded the whole made 'on every beholder a deep and unforgettable impression.' At night, floodlit in silver, the horseman 'loomed above his darkened sphere like a ghost of frost and ice.'

Suffused with silver beams the "Lord of the Isthmian Way" loomed above his darkened sphere like a ghost of frost and ice.

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LXIII

At a glance

• Listed first of the fair's nine fountains in the Official Guide, which labels its mood 'Joyous.'
• On Opening Day the crowd pouring through the gates met the fountain first, with the grandstand built against the Tower of Jewels behind it (Todd vol. 2, ch. XLVIII).
• In season the beds around it changed from yellow pansies, daffodils and tulips to 20,000 pink begonias (Todd vol. 2).
• Calder was Acting Chief of Sculpture and ran the exposition's sculpture shops in San Francisco (Todd vol. 1).

Afterward

No record of its preservation appears in Todd's account of salvage; like most of the staff sculpture, which 'had no sales value' and 'literally could not be given away,' it was presumably destroyed when the grounds were cleared in 1916 (Todd vol. 5).

Sources

• Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2, ch. LVI (The Fountain of Energy), chs. LXI, LXIII
• Official Guide of the PPIE (1915), The Exposition Sculpture
• Barry, The City of Domes (1915), ch. III
• Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 5, ch. XXXVII (disposal of staff sculpture)