Our next adventure takes us back to the Rose Garden in Washington Park, and once again we aren't looking at flowers. I was at the Rose Garden a few months ago taking photos for a couple of art posts (the Shakespeare relief, the Currey bench, and the Royal Rosarian statue), in the non-flowering off season to avoid the crowds. One of the garden's various sections is a "Gold Award Garden", a collection of past grand champion award-winning roses, some dating back to 1919. As I walked by, I noticed there was a little fountain among the non-blooming celebrity roses, so I took a few photos of it, along with a Vine clip to show the fountain running.
The garden only dates to 1969-1970, when local high society people (a.k.a. the sort of people who worry about these things) decided the rose garden wasn't doing a proper job of preserving past winners for posterity, and after various fancy-dress luncheons and fundraiser galas the whole thing came together. Newspaper accounts from that time just mention the fountain in passing, which I guess makes sense. The Rose Society's page about the garden (linked above) just says "Dorothy knew this needed an expert for design and layout and she chose what she considered the best. The board agreed with her Selection of Wallace Kay Huntington noted landscape architect to design the Gold Award Garden." Huntington is a prominent architect and architectural historian, and he was still consulting with local architecture firms as of a few years ago.
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