I made a quick publish about this fountain a couple of years in the past — it was the primary “Oakland stone landmark” publish — however a reader’s query pushed me all the way in which right into a worthy rabbit gap.
When John E. McElroy died unexpectedly on 24 March 1909 at lower than forty years of age, town of Oakland mourned a public benefactor whose unborn little one would by no means know him. Because the Metropolis Legal professional, McElroy wrested again Oakland’s waterfront lands from the railroad, undoing one of many nice crimes of our founder, the scoundrel Horace Carpentier. He additionally helped set up our popularity as a reliable Metropolis Stunning in a means that went past grand boulevards and splendid public buildings: kids’s playgrounds. He was elected 4 occasions; the final time each the Democrats and the Republicans endorsed him.
Park Commissioner James Edoff, a detailed collaborator and buddy, launched a personal donation drive to honor McElroy’s reminiscence with a big fountain in Lakeside Park. The design, by Park Fee architect Walter Reed, was submitted in March 1910. A scale mannequin was placed on show 7 July 1910, and the Tribune reported, “Granite, marble and concrete are up for the consideration of the fee and as quickly as the choice is made and the funds which town will contribute in the direction of its erection are turned over to the fee the work will start. It’s thought that the fee will determine in favor of using granite within the building.”
Bids got here in that August from six corporations, together with the Raymond Firm (whose Sierra White granite clads Metropolis Corridor) and California Granite Firm, and the Colusa Sandstone Firm gained the job. Town chipped within the majority of the $15,000 wanted.
I think that the bids fell into two classes: the granite corporations might provide their very own stone whereas the opposite corporations might emphasize their expertise and connections.
Colusa Sandstone Firm was a really profitable agency whose quarries, simply east of Websites and nonetheless seen immediately, equipped the stone and stoneworkers for a few of San Francisco’s best Belle Epoque landmarks: the Ferry Constructing, the Emporium Constructing, the Kohl Constructing, the Spreckels Constructing and extra. They might organize for premium stone from the perfect sources and end it to the very best state of artisanship.
That October the Tribune reported, “The basin and different parts of the fountain shall be of white marble, for which town has offered.” Particularly, as different tales reported, it was Georgia marble.
“Georgia marble” was successfully a trademark on the time. Then and immediately, this stone comes solely from Pickens County in northwestern Georgia, west of the previous gold rush city of Dahlonega and residential of an annual marble pageant. The Georgia Geologic Survey described the rock and the marble trade as of 1907, when the state was second solely to Vermont within the worth of its output. Many buildings in Washington DC use Georgia marble. The statue of Lincoln within the Lincoln Memorial sits on stone similar to the McElroy Fountain.
All of the proof factors to the Georgia Marble Firm’s Cherokee Quarry, positioned east of Tate, which on the time equipped a coarse-grained stone of white or “clouded” colour with mild blue-gray bands. See a few of it on the historic Tate mansion on the quarry grounds.
Marble is what occurs to limestone when it’s buried and subjected to the strain and warmth discovered a number of miles underground. Previous geologic stories assign this marble an Early Cambrian age, making it a very good half-billion years outdated. It was initially a physique of limestone that collected on the ground of the Iapetus Ocean, which resembled immediately’s Atlantic in being the results of continental rifting. The metamorphism that turned this stone to marble occurred later, in Ordovician time, when plate tectonics pressured the coasts of the Iapetus Ocean again collectively. This continental collision wrinkled and folded the rocks on the coronary heart of the Appalachian Mountains, within the inside Piedmont and Blue Ridge belts.
The bluish streaks are thought of to be remnants of bedding within the unique limestone. They’ve somewhat magnesium in them and a contact of iron.
Cherokee Quarry marble is exceptionally pure and notably coarse grained, each of which account for its power and endurance.
Now that I do know extra about this distinctive stone, I anticipate to acknowledge it in all places.
In June of 1911 bids have been obtained on the tiling and mosaic work: “The marble tiling and mosaic work shall be one of the crucial lovely parts of the fountain. Of 4 colours of imported marble, the stone shall be wrought into designs on the entrances in consonance with the remainder of the fountain.” Marbles for use within the tiling and mosaic are inexperienced Verdi vintage, white Alaska, or closely veined Italian, purple Numidian, yellow mild Sienna and nemesis marble.” (Go to the Getty Museum’s on-line thesaurus for extra on a few of these.)
Work on the mosaic was nonetheless in progress when the Park Fee formally accepted the fountain on 6 July 1911, solely 16 months after McElroy’s loss of life. The fountain was devoted on 17 September 1911, in an elaborate ceremony attended by hundreds. After a sequence of speeches and musical alternatives, McElroy’s toddler son John Jr. turned the fountain on. Then Scott’s Band performed “The Stars and Stripes Ceaselessly,” adopted by “America” with the gang singing alongside.
Even the water is particular. The fountain lies on prime of a reservoir that serves the Lakeside Park grounds. It was as soon as (and should be) fed with groundwater from two wells close by, maybe in a type of nondescript little huts within the park.
The 11 years since my earlier publish haven’t been sort to this distinctive construction.
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