Bethesda Terrace and Fountain
Bethesda Fountain is the central feature on the lower level of Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, New York. The pool is centered by a fountain sculpture designed by Emma Stebbins in 1868 and unveiled in 1873. Stebbins was the first woman to receive a public commission for a major work of art in New York City. The bronze, eight-foot statue depicts a winged angel touching down upon the top of the fountain, where water spouts and cascades into an upper basin and into the surrounding pool. Beneath her are four four-foot cherubs representing Temperance, Purity, Health, and Peace. Also called the Angel of the Waters, the statue refers to the Gospel of John, Chapter 5 where there is a description of an angel blessing the Pool of Bethesda, giving it healing powers. In Central Park the referent is the Croton Aqueduct opened in 1842, providing the city for the first time with a dependable supply of pure water: thus the angel carries a lily in one hand, representing purity, and with the other hand she blesses the water below. The base of the fountain was designed by the architect of all the original built features of Central Park, Calvert Vaux, with sculptural details, as usual, by Jacob Wrey Mould. In Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted's 1858 Greensward Plan, the terrace at the end of the Mall overlooking the naturalistic landscape of the Lake was simply called The Water Terrace, but after the unveiling of the angel, its name was changed to Bethesda Terrace.
The fountain, which had been dry for decades, was restored in its intial campaign, 1980-81, by the Central Park Conservancy as the centerpiece of its plan to renovate Central Park. The Terrace, designed by Vaux with sculptural decoration by Mould, was restored in the following season. Resodding, and fifty new trees, 3,500 shrubs and 3,000 ground cover plants followed in 1986.[1] Completion of the Minton encaustic tiles of the ceiling of the arcade between the flanking stairs were completed in 2007.
References
- The statue plays a part in the play and movie, Angels in America by Tony Kushner.
- Bialystock prays for Bloom to reconsider at the fountain in The Producers by Mel Brooks.
- They Might Be Giants shot their 1988 music video They'll Need a Crane at Bethesda Terrace and fountain.
- The fountain is the setting for the final scene between Didi and Sexton in Neil Gaiman's Sandman spin-off story Death: The High Cost of Living.
- The 1973 movie version of the musical play Godspell opens at the Bethesda Fountain with the character John the Baptist (David Haskell) standing in the top pool, holding the hand of the angel, and singing the musical number "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord".
- The starting point of the first episode of The Amazing Race is at Bethesda Fountain.
- The fountain is referenced as the place Alan Swann bathes nude in My Favorite Year.
- In the 1996 movie Ransom, the Terrace is the place where Tom Mullens (Mel Gibson) son Sean is kidnapped during a science contest.
Notes