Conceptual Only
Conceptual Only
The Mall fountains were designed to invite participation, but the City keeps wanting to keep people away from them.
"It's not right to put water before people and then keep them away from it," wrote William Whyte in his classic 1980 study of New York's plazas, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. "But this is what has been happening across the country."
All the significant urban spaces designed by renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin - Levi Plaza in San Francisco, Portland, Oregon's Keller Fountain Park, Seattle's Freeway Park, and, of course, our Downtown Mall - have fountains or pools that invite participation. They are a signature of the famous designer's immediately recognizable work. And while the Downtown Mall doesn't feature something as extravagant and wild as Keller Fountain Park [Halprin did have a plan for a large, participatory fountain plaza at the east end of the mall where the Ting Pavilion is, but the city balked at the cost], it does have four minor waterworks from the master.
However, as Whyte pointed out in his book, safety concerns from government officials have often served as reasons to cordon off water features like this, no matter who designed them, and Charlottesville is no exception.
As Jeff Werner, the city’s historic preservation planner, explained to Charlottesville's Board of Architectural Review (BAR) on Tuesday, there's a "clear expression" from the city manager's office that the fountains won't be turned on, due to liability concerns, until there's some kind of barrier placed around the three smaller ones. Last year, the BAR denied the city's desire to construct grates around those fountains, and so this year the city has a plan to place unattached barriers around them. See here:
Werner said they could do this without BAR approval and that he was presenting this plan to them as a courtesy to get their input.
"I still think it's awful," said BAR Chair Breck Gastinger, a landscape architect, who made it clear last year that any barrier is not in line with what Halprin intended for the fountains. And he still questioned the city's claim that it's an ADA issue. "This is a risk management issue, not an accessibility issue," he said.
As Gastinger pointed out, and as many others before him have, the outdoor cafe spaces surrounding three of the fountains that were granted to restaurants [ Miller's, The Nook, and Sal's] have already acted as barriers, corraling the fountains in commercial spaces where people have to pay to stay. The idea of additional barriers, the recurring public safety fixation on the fountains, and the city’s search for a design solution to a problem that doesn’t exist struck some BAR members as comical.
"We are one step away from a Monty Python comedy," one BAR member quipped.
"We are already there," said Gastinger.
Indeed, we were having the same conversation over 15 years ago, before a $7.5 million mall renovation in 2009, when safety concerns and maintenance issues often caused the fountains to be turned off. The city had for some time been discouraging people from wading into the Central Place fountain. There were worries about people tossing soap into the fountains, homeless people using them to bathe, and children drowning. One architect I spoke to at the time said it had turned Central Place into a “kind of dead zone.”
Maurice Cox, a UVA architecture professor, and former mayor, told me he thought the chain around the Central Place fountain, which was put there to address safety concerns, should be removed, calling it a "deterrent to truly enjoying an otherwise successful interactive public fountain."
Around that same time, UVA landscape architecture professor Beth Meyer, a specialist in 20th Century public landscape, sighed and chuckled in much the same way BAR members did Tuesday, bemoaning the city government's preoccupation with the mall's fountains.
"I am sure that some well-intentioned person in the City government was concerned about safety and installed the chains," said Meyer. "But perhaps we should consider why public spaces in Europe are so beautiful. There, you will find few railings or chains around fountains and canals. People of all ages are expected to deal with such small urban risks. Living with risk is something we do every day--when we cross the street, drive in a car, and fly in an airplane. Why is wading in a shallow pool and enjoying the spray of a fountain on the Downtown Mall so scary?"
Indeed, you can see the design of the Central Place fountain is inviting people to step down into the water, but the simple posts and chains operate like museum stanchions around an exhibit you’re not supposed to touch. In fact, this old 6-minute video of people walking by the Central Place fountain would make a good presentation at the annual crowd control industry convention. Even the kids look and veer away!
But you don't have to go to Europe to find water features without chains and barriers around them. For example, the Short Pump Mall features street-level pools that I’ve seen kids daringly leap across on the granite stepping stones.
Journalist Steve Hendrix put it nicely in this 2017 story for the Washington Post about DC’s fountains, "…dry fountains are the empty storefronts of public architecture, depressing testaments to civic shortcomings.”
“There’s a statement of public welfare in having a fountain,” added Thomas Luebke, then secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. "It speaks to the idea of common good and a competent government. When you have an empty pool that is supposed to be a central feature, the place loses its soul.”
Some would argue that trying to keep people from getting too close to them does the same thing.