With this week’s blow up over the condition of Evanston’s Fountain Square, a photo in the New York Times of a public fountain in Silver Spring, Md., caught my eye.

It accompanied a story about the revitalization of that close-in Washington, D.C., suburb and showed a fountain that has no retaining wall — one that lets people, mainly children, of course, actually walk through and play in the spray of water.

It reminded me of the splash fountain at the headquarters of the Christian Science Church in Boston’s Back Bay, which often was filled with kids, and their parents, when I walked by it on a hot summer day during the years I lived there.

As Evanston’s summer of downtown planning gets underway, what sort of fountain would you like to see in a revitalized Fountain Square?

Bill Smith is the editor and publisher of Evanston Now.

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1 Comment

  1. idea for fountain square
    how about a fountain in the summer
    converted to a skating ring in the winter.
    It’s multi-use allowing the fountain square
    area to be be used by the community all year round.

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