Nathaniel Wheeler Memorial, Then & Now -Bridgeport, CT

Lo­cated at the in­ter­sec­tion of Fair­field and Park av­enues, the foun­tain was erected in 1912–1913 by Nathaniel Wheeler’s chil­dren. Wheeler was a prin­ci­pal in Wheeler & Wil­son, an early man­u­fac­turer of sewing ma­chines, who mov­ed his fac­tory to Bridge­port in 1856, Wheeler had been ac­tive in many city af­fairs, in­clud­ing plans to beau­tify the city. The foun­tain was added to the National Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places on April 4, 1985.

Designed by John Gut­zon de la Mothe Borglum, the foun­tain con­sists of four el­e­ments: a cen­tral bronze mer­maid ris­ing out of a pol­ished gran­ite pool hold­ing aloft a lamp surrounded by three unique gran­ite wa­ter­ing troughs at the corners of the tri­an­gu­lar intersections of Fairfield Avenue, John Street and Park Avenue. Automobiles were not as prevalent on Bridgeport streets as horses in 1912. The watering troughs quickly became obsolete. Today, the intersection is fairly treacherous, and there is no easy way to get from the sidewalk to the fountain in order to admire its elements, or to read Nathaniel Wheeler’s name at the base of the pool.

Borglum was an Amer­i­can sculp­tor born of Danish Mormon immigrants most widely known for the colos­sal sculp­ture Mount Rush­more Na­tional Memorial. He was also as­so­ci­ated with var­i­ous other pub­lic works of art, in­clud­ing Stone Moun­tain in Geor­gia, the statue of Union Gen­eral Philip Sheri­dan in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as well as a bust of Abra­ham Lin­coln which was ex­hib­ited in the White House by Theodore Roosevelt[5] and which is now held in the United States Capi­tol crypt in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

The foun­tain un­der­went a $199,000 restora­tion in 2009–2010, in which ve­hic­u­lar dam­age was re­paired and the flow of water was re­stored to the foun­tain. The water was not on when I visited the memorial in July, 2021.