Sep 12 2008
Millenium Park: The fountains
Alas, summer is over. The weather in Chicago (as it is all over the continental US from what I understand) is a bit screwy, but it’s just not shorts and water, water everywhere weather anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I do like Autumn, but Fall in an area like Chicago where there is already a scarcity of green is rather depressing.
To mark the last day of Summer (ie., Labor Day), my wife and I took our little princess to the Crown Fountain at the Millennium Park just east of the Loop in downtown Chicago and west of the lake. The Millennium Park is probably the greatest of the major expensive boondoggles done in and for Chicago. It was years and years behind schedule before unveiling and was dozens of millions above and beyond budget, costing both city dwellers and individual and corporate donors tens of millions of dollars that we may never receive back in generated income.
But as far as failures go (and more on that in a continuing, periodic series) it is a wonderful one. The Jay Pritzker Pavilion , Cloud Gate (aka “The Bean”), BP Bridge (unfortunate name…), and the Crown Fountain are beautiful and useful works of grand public art. Unlike, say, Soldiers Field.
The fountain is a rectangular space bookended by two massive tower sculptures. The sculptures are about five feet tall and have thousands of LCD screens to project images of talking people or cascading mountains. The spaces in between the screens are where most of the water drizzles out of.
Every few minutes however, a person’s “mouth” will open up and the fountain will sprout. On this particular day, the children - all twice the size of our daughter - were waiting with expectant squeals to be drenched.
As you may notice, the little rubbery things between the screens can easily be damaged. Thankfully, they can also easily be put back into place.
Btw, because of space constrictions on this page, I do not often add images. Unfortunately, the image of this site suffers, I think, from that. But if you would like to see more images, including more from this event, please check out the Family Dyegest.
